Aardman Animations, the creators of WALLACE & GROMIT, present this collection of clay animation shorts: CREATURE COMFORTS (1989), WAT'S PIG (1996), NOT WITHOUT MY HANDBAG (1993) and ADAM (1991), each featuring an offbeat story with topnotch claymation. Ranging in style from mockumentary, to fairy tale, to tripped-out social commentary, to Zarathustrian reflection on the act of creation, the anthology provides a cross-section of the talents working in the studio that has been at the forefront of the renaissance of stop-motion animation.

An animation festival wrapped into one convenient video package, this collection consists of four short films that highlight the diversity and highly unique visions of contemporary British practioners of the art of claymation. Nick Park's contribution, the hilarious CREATURE COMFORTS, takes actual dialogue recorded by Park and an assistant and animates the interviews as if they were the thoughts of various zoo animals. WAT'S PIG, directed by Peter Lord, uses a split screen to illustrate the contrasting lives of a king and a pig-keeper, who are actually twins separated at birth. Boris Kessmehl's NOT WITHOUT MY HANDBAG takes place in a world where failure to make installment payments on a washing machine can lead to the loss of one's soul. In the final film, ADAM, Lord imagines the stop-motion animator as god and his clay creation as his put-upon, often unruly subject.

In 1991, Nick Park's CREATURE COMFORTS won an Academy Award for Best Short Film (Animated), beating out another one of his films, A GRAND DAY OUT, starring Wallace and Gromit.

CREATURE COMFORTS was the fifth film in a British TV series called LIP SYNCH. Park's short inspired a set of commercials in which claymation animals acted as spokepersons for the British Electric Board. The income from the commercials helped keep Aardman Animations financially afloat.

Park recorded about half the interviews for his short. "I tried to to ask questions that would produce the kind of answers that animals might make," he remarked for the book CREATING 3-D ANIMATION: THE AARDMAN BOOK OF FILMMAKING.

After the interviewers were over, Park later decided which animal would fit each voice. For instance, he considered making the voice of the Brazilian student into a penguin; Park later decided to use the voice for the jaguar.

"Do you like steaks and chips with lions with it?"--Polar bear to another polar bear

"Here you have everything sorted out--double glazing, your heating and everything, but you don't have space!"--Jaguar to interviewer

"Animals in the circus have to sit on boxes and balls, but animals in the zoo, they don't have to do anything. They can do their own thing, like drinking and eating."--Bird to interviewer

"The idea for WAT'S PIG came during a holiday in France. I was in the Dordogne, where you can see these huge medieval castles standing in full view of one another. I thought, how difficult to have been a peasant in the middle of this lot, caught up in the intrigues of warring barons who held the key to everything you did in life," Peter Lord commented in CREATING 3-D ANIMATION: THE AARDMAN BOOK OF FILMMAKING.

"For nonpayment of installments, the contractee shall go to hell, without further notice."--Auntie, reading the fine print in her contract

For the scene in ADAM where Adam runs around the globe seemingly in defiance of gravity, the camera was placed on the ceiling, looking downwards; a glass was placed around the circumference of the globe, so that the clay figure is actually supported at all times.

DVD Features:

Region 0
Snap Case
Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
Dolby Digital Stereo - English

Distributor Notes: From the creators of the box office smash "Chicken Run" and "Wallace and Gromit" comes "Creature Comforts," an amazing collection of clay-animation shorts from world-famous Aardman Animations. It's a Zoo's-Who of fun! Clay animation animals comment on life at the zoological gardens in "Creature Comforts," winner of the 1990 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Then meet "Wat's Pig," the 1996 Oscar-nominated tale of knights and daze involving two brothers one raised in royal splendor, the other by a kindly pig. In the darkly hilarious "Not Without My Handbag," a dear, deceased Auntie makes the ultimate fashion statement she won't stay in Hell without a proper handbag. And lastly there's the story of "Adam" (1992 Oscar-nominee for Best Animated Short Film), a whimsical in-the-beginning tale about a little clay and a lot of imagination.

Source: Image Entertainment, Inc.

Nick Park: British Animator
Peter Lord: Animation Director

 Aardman Animations: 

Rating: B+ - Entertainment Weekly Recommends