Creature Comforts

What is Creature Comforts?

Creature Comforts was originally a British plasticine animated short film about how animals feel about living in a zoo, featuring the voices of the British public "spoken" by the animals. It was created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. 

Producing

The things animals say in Creature Comforts are unscripted and unrehearsed. There needs to be honesty and a sense of real life in what they say because the voice over are animals which they don't yet know so if they did, it could slightly be put on and all go wrong!
Unlike most other animation, the characters are created to fit the chosen voices  - not the other way round. All the animators, artists and the producer listen to the voices and decide together which animals fits the voice the best. 

It takes a long time to get from someone being interviewed to their words coming out of an animated animals mouth and there are all sorts of of things that affect which creature gets paired with which voice. 

The last stage before they are animated is making the mouths for the models. Modellers make a neutral mouth based on an 'a' shape and then lots of other mouths for the specific model are created through that mouth shape. Each creature takes between one and three weeks to make and they all start off the same - a lump of plasticine. 

The new series of Creature Comforts is shot completely digitally. The directors of photography make the most of the digital look as it would be too expensive and difficult to film. Once the sketches have been drawn they are sent to the builders and Andy (the director of Photography). They work together to decide which kind of lens to use, close up or far away, depending on the dimensions of the set.