Nick Park

Nick Park was born in Preston in Lancashire, and grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons. He studied Commnication Arts at Sheffield 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 Day Out[?].

In 1985 he joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer") and completed A Grand Day Out. With A Grand Day Out 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.

Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers[?] (1992) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, and both won Oscars. He then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run[?] (2000), co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord. He is working on a Wallace and Gromit feature for release in 2004, and is supervising a new series of "Creature Comforts" films for British television.