Nicholas Wulstan Park (born 6 December 1958) is an English filmmaker, animator, and voice actor who created Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award seven 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). He also was the co-director, co-producer, and storyboard artist of Early Man (2018) and provided vocal sound effects for Hognob, a dog-like warthog who has dog behaviors, also Dug's pet warthog.
He has also received seven BAFTA Awards, including the BAFTA for Best Short Animation for A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was believed to be the most-watched television programme in the United Kingdom in 2008. His 2000 film Chicken Run is the highest-grossing stop motion animated film.
In 1985 Park joined Aardman Animations, based in Bristol, and for his work in animation he was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a 2012 version of Blake's most famous artwork - the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover - to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.
Park was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1997 Birthday Honours for "services to the animated film industry".
Contents
Early life and education
Nicholas Wulstan Park was born on 6 December 1958 in Preston, Lancashire, to seamstress Mary Cecilia (née Ashton; 1930-2020) and Roger Wulstan Park (1925–2004), an architectural photographer. The middle child of five siblings, he grew up in Penwortham; the family later moved to Walmer Bridge. His sister Janet lives in Longton, Lancashire. He attended Cuthbert Mayne High School (now Our Lady's Catholic High School).
Park grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons, and as a 13-year-old, he made films with the help of his mother, her home film camera and cotton bobbins. He also took after his father, an amateur inventor, and would submit to Blue Peter homemade items such as a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools.
He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield City 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.
Career
In 1985, Park joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the dance scene involving oven-ready chickens for the music video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer"). He also had a part in animating the Penny cartoons from the first season of Pee-wee's Playhouse, which featured Paul Reubens as his character Pee-wee Herman.
Along with all this, he had finally completed A Grand Day Out, and with that 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 won the first BAFTA Award, and Creature Comforts won his first Academy Award.
In 1990, Park worked alongside advertising agency GGK to develop a series of highly acclaimed television advertisements for the "Heat Electric" campaign. The Creature Comforts advertisements are now regarded as among the best advertisements ever shown on British television, as voted (independently) by viewers of the United Kingdom's main commercial channels ITV and Channel 4.
Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, both winning Academy Awards. He then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run (2000), co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord. He also supervised a new series of Creature Comforts films for British television in 2003.
His second theatrical feature-length film and first Wallace and Gromit feature, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was released on 5 October 2005, and on 6 March 2006 it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 78th Academy Awards.
On 10 October 2005, a fire gutted one of Aardman Animations' archive warehouses. The fire resulted in the loss of some of Park's creations, including the models and sets used in the movie Chicken Run. Some of the original Wallace and Gromit models and sets, as well as the master prints of the finished films, were elsewhere and survived.
Personal life
The Daily Telegraph remarked Park has taken on some attributes of Wallace, just "as dog owners come to look like their pets", overexpressing himself, possibly as a result of having to show animators how he wants his characters to behave.
Park married Mags Connolly at the Gibbon Bridge Hotel near Chipping on 16 September 2016. Although by his own admission, he was not especially interested in football growing up, he has always nominally supported his hometown's local team, Preston North End.
Influences
Nick Park has stated that his main influences have been Ray Harryhausen, Oliver Postgate, Peter Firmin, Chuck Jones, Hayao Miyazaki, Yuri Norstein, Richard Williams, Terry Gilliam, and Bob Godfrey. He was inspired by Gilliam's animation in Monty Python "to be a bit wacky and off the wall." He is a fan of Gerry Anderson, known for "Supermarionation" as seen in Thunderbirds.
He is a fan of The Beano comic, and guest-edited the 70th-anniversary issue dated 2 August 2008. He stated, "My dream job was always to work on The Beano and it's such an honour for me to be Guest Editor." He also contributed to Classics from the Comics at the same time, picking his favourite classic stories for the comic reprint magazine's new Classic Choice feature.
His film-making ideas were encouraged by his old English teacher; however, Park has denied that the character of Wallace was based on him.
Works
Commercials
Burger King commercials
The Electricity Association
Video games
Wallace & Gromit Fun Pack (1996)
Wallace & Gromit Fun Pack 2 (1999)
Accolades and honours
In 1996, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath.
On 25 October 1997, Park was awarded the Honorary Freedom of Preston, his home town (now city), which is the highest award a Council can bestow on an individual.
In 2016, and following a vote by students on a number of nominated 'Preston Legends', the University of Central Lancashire named one of three new meeting rooms in the students' union after Park, who was born in the city where it is based. In response, Park sent the university a message to say how honoured he was by it.
