More creature discomforts

Back in November the Creature Discomforts adverts for Leonard Cheshire Disability were first shown, this week there will be more new characters and adverts but the message is the same and beautifully expressed by the voice behind Tim the Tortoise Ian Wilding, "See the person, not the disability".

There's lots of info on the site about how the adverts were made and the people who helped make them. You can also order the DVD of the adverts from the website.

New Creature Comforts

Aardman's latest creature comforts is made for Leonard Cheshire Disability charity. Leonard Cheshire provides services for disabled people and campaigns for their rights and have provided input for Aardman to create a range of new characters including Spud the Slug, Peg the Hedgehog and Flash the Sausage Dog. The characters explain some of the prejudices that are still common in the UK and are all voiced by real disabled people. The director Steve Harding-Hill described working with disabled people as being incredibly satisfying.

The Creature Discomforts characters appear in adverts that will be seen online, in magazines, at bus stops and on the Tube from this Thursday.

The aptly named "Creature Discomforts" series is previewed online and can be seen in full in the spring of 2008.

Aardman News

I've kind of been stockpiling Aardman news so here's a whole bunch of announcements together.

Aardman's been making a few changes internally, new writers Matthew Graham, Peter Baynham and Ashley Pharoah have joined and Sarah Smith in the Aardman Features. Sarah has been promoted to Creative Director.

The Creature Comforts US series has been cancelled before CBS has had chance to show all of the episodes. You can join the petition to get it back on air. CBS claim that it was looking for higher ratings. However some lucky people got to see an unaired episode at Platform International Animation Festival in Portland.

Shaun the Sheep however goes from strength to strength by winning the Cristal for Best Television at this Annecy International Animation Festival. 'The Pearce Sisters' by Luis Cook won the Special Jury Award. You can watch a couple of clips of the harsh life by the sea that these sisters endure on the Aardman website.

The new projects in the pipeline are:

'The Cat Burglars', a comedy heist that follows a gang of milk-pilfering stray cats as they pull off their biggest ever job - the 'Great Milk Float Robbery'. Steve Box directs this claymation film

'Operation Rudolph' an action-adventure comedy set on Christmas night. It shows the North Pole operation as an exhilarating ultra high-tech military procedure on a massive scale, revealing how Santa and his huge army of combat elves can actually get round the whole world in one night.

'Pirates! Adventure with Scientists' will be directed by Peter Lord.



The story from Gideon Defoe sees the Pirate Captain and Charles Darwin travel from the pirate dens of Port Royal to the streets of Victorian London stumbling on his arch-rival Black Bellamy and the Elephant Man in a plot to save the last dodo from the dining table of Queen Victoria. Gideon Defoe is working on the script with Peter Lord and Gnomeo and Juliet writers Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil

A new (non Wallace and Gromit) project from Nick Park and 2 other projects.

For those of you who followed the "Purple and Brown" series on Youtube, you should love the new series Pib and Pob that is now available on Atom Films.




http://www.atomfilms.com/films/pib_pog.jsp

The latest Pib and Pog films are directed by Peter Peake who directed the origional film back in 1993/4. He's also been involved with a big selection of other Aardman projects including Creature Comforts and Rex the Runt.

Finally, Aardman films should also soon be available on Joost.