Christopher Sadler (born 1970 [1] ) is a British animator, director and writer. He is primarily known for his work on Wallace and Gromit , Chicken Run , Rex the Runt , Cracking Contraptions , Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep .[ citation needed ]
He completed his secondary education at Codsall High School, Staffordshire, leaving in 1989 having passed four A levels. He then joined a one-year art and design foundation course at Stafford College before moving to Bristol and embarking on a Graphic Design degree at University of the West of England.[ citation needed ]
Although he originally focused on illustration, Sadler later turned his hand to stop motion animation. He graduated in 1993. He began his professional career as a freelance model/set builder before returning to animation. During the 1990s he worked for various film production companies including Bolex Brothers and Elm Road Studios in Bristol, Aaagh Animations in Cardiff and Gnome Productions in Wellington, New Zealand.[ citation needed ]
He first worked for Aardman Animations in 1994 as a freelance animator and model maker, working on several commercials and the pilot episode for Richard Goleszowski's Rex the Runt series. This led to him being given his first chance to direct when the second series went into production in 2001. In 1999 he was a member of the animation team on Robbie the Reindeer for the BBC, his last independent production before joining Aardman.[ citation needed ]
He became a full-time Aardman staff member in November 2000 and enjoyed several roles during his time there, including key/character animator on the stop frame feature film projects, "Chicken Run", "Curse of the WereRabbit" and "The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists!" He joined the Shaun the Sheep team in late 2005, helping to develop the look and animation style of the series and was director of ten episodes. [2]
He was made series director for the second series of forty episodes, which completed production in March 2010. After the filming of "The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists!" completed in December 2011, he returned to direct five more episodes of "Shaun the Sheep" series 3. He left Aardman Animations in August 2012. [3]
Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. The main film series consists of four short films and one feature-length film, and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and made public in 1989. Wallace was voiced by actors Peter Sallis and Ben Whitehead. Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, communicating through facial expressions and body language.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Nicholas Wulstan Park is an English animator and filmmaker who created Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Rex the Runt is a British live-action stop-motion adult animated claymation pixilation comedy series, primarily consisting of a television show and two short films produced by Aardman Animations for BBC Bristol in association with EVA Entertainment and Egmont Imagination. Its main characters are four plasticine dogs: Rex, Wendy, Bad Bob and Vince.
Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave is a 1995 British stop-motion animated film co-written and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol and BBC Children's International. It is the third film featuring Wallace and Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993). A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. A Close Shave saw the first appearance of Shaun, who became the hero of the Shaun the Sheep spin-off series.
Morph is a British series of clay stop-motion comedy animations, named after the main character, who is a small Plasticine man, who speaks an unintelligible language and lives on a tabletop, his bedroom being a small wooden box. The character was initially seen interacting with Tony Hart, beginning in 1977, on several of his British television programmes, notably Take Hart, Hartbeat and SMart.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a 2005 stop-motion animated comedy film directed by Nick Park and Steve Box and produced by DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations as the second feature-length film by Aardman, after Chicken Run (2000). It was the last DreamWorks Animation film to be distributed by DreamWorks Pictures, as the studio spun off as an independent studio in 2004 until its acquisition by NBCUniversal in 2016. The film debuted in Sydney, Australia on 4 September 2005, before being released in theaters in the United States on 7 October 2005 and in the United Kingdom a week later on 14 October 2005.
Peter Lord CBE is an English animator, director, producer and co-founder of the Academy Award-winning Aardman Animations studio, an animation firm best known for its clay-animated films and shorts, particularly those featuring plasticine duo Wallace and Gromit. He also directed Chicken Run along with Nick Park from DreamWorks Animation, and The Pirates! Band of Misfits from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 85th Academy Awards.
Shaun the Sheep is a British stop-motion animated silent comedy children's television series and a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit franchise. The title character is Shaun. The series focuses on his adventures on a northern English farm as the leader of his flock.
Steven Royston Box is an English animator and director who works for Aardman Animations.
Richard Starzak, previously known as Richard "Golly" Goleszowski, is an English animator, screenwriter, and film director.
Purple and Brown is a British stop-motion animated short series made in collaboration with Nickelodeon and Aardman Animations, the creators of Wallace and Gromit. The series was devised and directed by Rich Webber and edited by Mike Percival, who also offered the voices of the characters, and first aired in February 2006, on Nickelodeon's UK and Ireland channel, and then later became a staple on the US Nickelodeon network as part of its former Nick Extra short program.
Mark Burton is a British television writer, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and film director.
Andy Symanowski is a writer, director, animation director and stop-motion animator for Aardman Animations.
Timmy Time is a British stop-motion animated television programme for preschoolers created and produced by Bob the Builder producer Jackie Cockle for the BBC's CBeebies and produced by Aardman Studios. It started broadcasting in the United Kingdom on 6 April 2009. It is a spin-off of Shaun the Sheep, itself a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit film A Close Shave (1995).
Nick Vincent Murphy is an Irish screenwriter and novelist. He is best known for his work on the TV comedy series Moone Boy (2012–15), the Moone Boy novels, the animated series Dorg Van Dango (2020–21), and the feature film Hideaways (2011).
David Alexander Riddett BSC is a prominent English cinematographer mostly known for his work at Aardman Animations.
Shaun the Sheep Movie is a 2015 stop-motion animated adventure comedy film written and directed by Richard Starzak and Mark Burton. It is based on the British television series Shaun the Sheep, in turn a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit film A Close Shave (1995). Starring the voices of Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, and Omid Djalili, the film follows Shaun and his flock navigating the big city to save their amnesiac farmer, while an overzealous animal control worker pursues the group. It was produced by Aardman Animations, and financed by StudioCanal in association with Anton Capital Entertainment.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
Robin Robin is a 2021 stop-motion animated musical short film produced by Aardman Animations, created and directed by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please, and written by Ojari, Please, and Sam Morrison.