Stop-motion expert Aardman is lending its name to a new puppet-making toolkit geared at students and professionals.

The Bristol, UK-based prodco has linked up with global retailer Animation Toolkit to launch the kits online.

Designed and created by Animation Toolkit, the Aardman Animation Kit will feature six products, including character, creature and rigging kits, that can be used to form puppet armatures (anatomically correct metal engineered skeletons).

The kits range in price from US$19 (£14.99) to US$165 (£129.99) and are available for pre-sale on the animationtoolkit website until June 15 when each offering will be sold on Amazon.

Former Mackinnon and Saunders puppet maker and animation producer Westley Wood founded Animation Toolkit in 2006 to help amateur and professional artists with the difficult and costly process of puppet fabrication. Since then, it has collaborated with major studios, including Disney, DreamWorks and Laika. It has brought other affordable kits to market, including Armacreature from the stop-motion icon Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans).

As Aardman continues to expand its bread-and-butter expertise in stop-motion, it’s also diversifying into more digital-based projects. In 2020, a Wallace & Gromit immersive, multi-user augmented-reality experience will be introduced in partnership with a group of British companies, including video gamemakers Potato, Sugar Creative and Tiny Rebel Games.