Bristol scores two Oscar nominations

Aardman’s groaning trophy cabinet seems likely to require further expansion after the Shaun the Sheep Movie was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Animated Feature category. Also flying the flag for Bristol is Richard Williams, whose Prologue has now been nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category at both the BAFTAs and Oscars.

Shaun’s nod marks Aardman’s eleventh Oscar nomination. Thus far the Bristol animation studio has clocked up four wins: three for short films (Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave) and one for a feature (Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit). Co-directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzak have also been nominated for Best Animated Film at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs, as well as a host of other awards, though they lost out to Pixar’s Inside Out at the Globes.

Aardman’s next feature project is Nick Park’s stop-motion animated caveman comedy Early Man, which reveals in Aardman-esque style how the game of football originated. It’s provisionally set for release on January 26, 2018, just as World Cup fever gets into gear. A sequel to the Shaun the Sheep Movie, which has now taken more than $100m worldwide, is also officially in development.

Now resident in Bristol, 82-year-old Canadian animator Richard Williams is best known for the ground-breaking Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for which he won two Oscars. He bagged a third Oscar for A Christmas Carol (1971). Williams also created the animated title sequences for What’s New, Pussycat?, the original Casino Royale and two of the later Pink Panther movies. His latest project is The Animator’s Survival Kit – Animated, which has been described as “the ultimate animation course”.

He animated the six-minute Prologue alone over several years, finally completing it at Aardman’s studios in time to be screened at last September’s Encounters festival. Its wordless story describes an incident in the Spartan-Athenian wars of 2400 years ago, during which a little girl witnesses a battle to the death between warriors.

Of the film’s painstaking genesis, Williams says: “I’ve gone back to 1900 and drawn everything on one sheet of paper. Then it’s polished with state of the art technology. It has taken over 6,000 complex animated life drawings to create this film.”

“We have just witnessed animation history,” declared Aardman co-founder Peter Lord after Prologue’s premiere. “Nobody else alive could have created hand-drawn animation of this intensity and quality.” Other commentators have described the film as “one of the best hand-drawn films of all time.”

The BAFTA ceremony takes place on Feb 14. The Oscar ceremony follows on Feb 28. To celebrate The Shaun the Sheep Movie’s nominations, the Slapstick Festival is offering a limited-time two-for-the-price-of-one ticket deal for its Shaun show at St. George’s on Saturday 23 Jan, at which Marcus Brigstocke will be talking to filmmakers Richard Starzak and Mark Burton and showing clips. Just use the code SLAPSHEEP when booking to take advantage of this offer.