Season’s bleatings
Nice to meet ewe again... Shaun The Sheep is baa-ck for Christmas, as MARION McMULLEN looks at the making of a dyed-in-the-wool star
LOOKING for a little woolly jumper from Santa?
Shaun the Sheep is back and starring in the BBC’s new Christmas promotional sequences.
The animated star features in three special festive scenes created for the channel by Bristol’s multiaward winning independent animation studio Aardman.
Shaun’s friends sheepdog Bitzer, The Farmer and the Flock – as well as some new characters − feature in the slices of seasonal slapstick and Shaun himself will star in half-hour special Shaun The Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas.
Aardman’s much-loved character made his TV debut back in 1995 in the third Wallace And Gromit adventure A Close Shave.
They saved him from a sinister sheep-rustling enterprise and he thanked them by moving in and eating everything in sight.
Shaun became so popular that merchandise like backpacks and toys followed and in 2007 he landed his own CBBC series looking at his life on Mossy Bottom Farm with his flock.
More than 170 episodes have been made since then. They bear pun-tastics titles like Room With A Ewe, Baad Hair Day and Championsheeps.
The TV series has also become a favourite all over the world from Australia, America, Russia, Europe, Japan, India, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates. He has also gone on to success on the big screen in films Shaun The Sheep: The Movie and Farmageddon
and appeared in the BBC’s 2015 Christmas special Shaun The Sheep: The Farmer’s Llamas.
Prince William even met with Shaun back in 2015 during a visit to the British Ambassador’s official residence in Beijing, China.
Oscar-winning animator Nick Park once explained: “Plasticine was available when I was a teenager and started doing animation. I
wanted to be like Disney, trying to film with plastic cells (the transparent celluloid animators draw characters on), but it was all too expensive. I didn’t have enough money to buy cells, at least not enough to make more than four and a half seconds of animation, but Plasticine was around, user-friendly and available to the masses.”
A sheep replacement that worked!