Wallace and gromit nick park biography

English filmmaker (born )

"Nicholas Park" redirects here. For the field hockey player, see Nicholas Park (field hockey).

Nicholas Wulstan ParkCBE RDI^[2][3] (born 6 December )^[4] is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man.^[5] Park has been nominated for an Academy Award six times and won four with Creature Comforts (), The Wrong Trousers (), A Close Shave () and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit ().^[6]

He has also received five BAFTA Awards, including the BAFTA for Optimal Short Animation for A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was believed to be the most-watched television programme in the United Kingdom in ^[7][8] His film Chicken Run is the highest-grossing stop motion animated film.^[9]

In Park joined Aardman Animations, based in Bristol, and for his work in animation he was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a version of Blake's most famous artwork - the Beatles' Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover - to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.^[10][11]

Park was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in the Birthday Honours for "services to the animated film industry".^[12]

Early life

Nicholas Wulstan Park was born on 6 December in Preston, Lancashire, to seamstress Mary Cecilia (née Ashton; born ) and Roger Wulstan Park (–), an architectural photographer.^[13] The middle minor of five siblings, he grew up in Penwortham; the family later moved to Walmer Bridge.

His sister Janet lives in Longton, Lancashire.^[14] He attended Cuthbert Mayne High School (now Our Lady's Catholic High School).

Park grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons, and as a year-old, he made films with the help of his mother, her home clip camera and cotton bobbins.

He also took after his father, an amateur inventor, and would submit to Blue Peter domestic items such as a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools.^[15]

He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield City Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) and then went to the National Film and Television School, where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Evening Out.

Career

In , Park connected the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the dance scene involving oven-ready chickens for the music video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer").

He also had a part in animating the Penny cartoons from the first season of Pee-wee's Playhouse, which featured Paul Reubens as his ethics Pee-wee Herman.

Along with all this, he had finally completed A Grand Day Out, and with that in post-production, he made Creature Comforts as his contribution to a series of shorts called "Lip Synch".

Creature Comforts matched animated zoo animals with a soundtrack of people talking about their homes. The two films were nominated for a host of awards. A Grand Day Out beat Creature Comforts for the BAFTA Award, but it was Creature Comforts that won Park his first Oscar.

In , Park worked alongside advertising agency GGK to develop a series of highly acclaimed television advertisements for the "Heat Electric" campaign. The Creature Comforts advertisements are now regarded as among the best advertisements ever shown on British television, as voted (independently) by viewers of the United Kingdom's main commercial channels ITV^[16] and Channel 4.^[17]

Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers () and A Close Shave (), followed, both winning Oscars.

He then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run (), co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord. He also supervised a unused series of Creature Comforts films for British television in

His second theatrical feature-length film and first Wallace and Gromit main attraction, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was released on 5 October , and won Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 78th Academy Awards, 6 March

On 10 October , a fire gutted one of Aardman Animations' archive warehouses.^[18] The fire resulted in the loss of some of Park's creations, including the models and sets used in the production Chicken Run.

Some of the original Wallace and Gromit models and sets, as well as the master prints of the finished films, were elsewhere and survived.

In and , Park's work included a United States version of Creature Comforts, a weekly television series that was on CBS every Monday evening at 8&#;pm ET.

In the series, Americans were interviewed about a range of subjects. The interviews were lip-synced to Aardman animal characters.

In September , it was announced that Park had been commissioned to blueprint a bronze statue of Wallace and Gromit, which will be placed in his home town of Preston.^[19] In October , it was announced that the BBC had commissioned another Wallace and Gromit short film to be entitled Trouble at Mill^[20] (retitled later to A Matter of Loaf and Death).

Park studied at Preston College,^[21] which has since named its library for the art and style department after him: the Nick Park Library Learning Centre. He is the recipient of a gold Blue Peter badge.^[15]

By the beginning of , Park had won four Academy Awards, and had the distinction of having won an Academy Award every time he had been nominated (his only loss being when he was nominated twice in the same category).

This streak ended in the Oscars when A Matter of Loaf and Death failed to win the best animated short Academy Award.

The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. It consists of four short filmstwo feature-length filmsand numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The first short clip, A Grand Day Outwas finished and released in Wallace has been voiced by Peter Sallis and Ben Whitehead.

Park had his first acting role in February , voicing himself in a cameo on The Simpsons episode "Angry Dad: The Movie". In the episode, the make-believe Park's new Willis and Collapse short, Better Gnomes and Gardens, is a parody of Wallace and Gromit.

In the termination of , Park directed a music video for "Plain Song"—a song by Native and the Name, a Sheffield band led by Joe Rose, the son of an old university ally. The video was filmed at Birkdale School, Sheffield, and Park also selected the track as one of his Desert Island Discs when he went on the show in , which led to suggestions that Park was using his fame to give a friend a leg up in his career.

Park denied these claims, insisting it had become one of his favourite songs. The song and video can be found on YouTube.

In April , Park was involved in the British stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki's animated film, Princess Mononoke.^[22] He was the executive producer of Shaun the Sheep Movie and he also voiced himself in a cameo.

For , he directed another Aardman Animations stop-motion film, titled Early Man, which tells a story of a caveman who unites his tribe against the Bronze Age while unintentionally inventing football.^[23][24]

On 21 May , Park announced that a new Wallace and Gromit undertaking was currently in the works, with no projected release date.^[25][26] In January , Park announced that the project was currently in production as a television film for release in for the BBC and Netflix.^[27] The film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, was first shown on BBC One on Christmas Day , and also featured the return of Wrong Trousers villain Feathers McGraw.

Personal life

The Daily Telegraph remarked Park has taken on some attributes of Wallace, just "as dog owners come to look like their pets", overexpressing himself, possibly as a result of having to show animators how he wants his characters to behave.^[15]

Park married Mags Connolly at the Gibbon Bridge Hotel near Chipping on 16 September ^[28] Although by his own admission, he was not especially interested in football growing up, he has always nominally supported his hometown's local team, Preston North End.^[29]

Honours

In he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath.

On 25 October , Park was awarded the Honorary Freedom of Preston, his home town (now city), which is the extreme award a Council can bestow on an individual.^[30]

In , and following a vote by students on a number of nominated 'Preston Legends', the University of Central Lancashire named one of three new meeting rooms in the students' union after Park, who was born in the city where it is based.

In response, Park sent the university a message to utter how honoured he was by it.^[31]

Influences

Nick Park has stated that his main influences have been Ray Harryhausen, Oliver Postgate, Peter Firmin, Chuck Jones, Yuri Norstein, Richard Williams, Terry Gilliam, and Bob Godfrey.^[32] He was inspired by Gilliam's animation in Monty Python "to be a bit wacky and off the wall."^[32] He is a fan of Gerry Anderson, known for "Supermarionation" as seen in Thunderbirds.^[33]

He is a fan of The Beano comic, and guest-edited the 70th-anniversary issue dated 2 August He stated, "My dream job was always to work on The Beano and it's such an honour for me to be Guest Editor."^[34] He also contributed to Classics from the Comics at the same time, picking his favourite classic stories for the comic reprint magazine's modern Classic Choice feature.

His film-making ideas were encouraged by his old English teacher; however, Park has denied that the ethics of Wallace was based on him.^[35]

Filmography

Feature films

Short films

Television and web series

Music videos

Commercials

• Burger King commercials
• The Electricity Association

Video games

• Wallace & Gromit Entertainment Pack ()
• Wallace & Gromit Pleasurable Pack 2 ()

Awards and nominations

References

External links