Creature Comforts

I think this is my favourite Aardman animation and it's probably the simplest. The interviewer takes a delightfully comedic ping at the dreaded television "vox pop" by going to a zoo where she interviews an host of the occupants. Some are perfectly happy in their centrally heated, double glazed environment where they are fed and watered regularly, others - like the Brazilian lion need space, more space and then even more space. Oh, and water that he can can drink and swim in! The chickens steal the show for me, especially the two in the background who mimic the wave to the camera thing whist their pal is extolling the virtues of life in captivity. The dialogue entertainingly parodies the kind of nervously inane comments you get from the public when they are interviewed for the telly and it's genuinely funny. The stop motion clay-mation and the attention to the detailed depth of the characters and the scenarios as they relate their stories makes this a must watch.

This short won the Oscar for Animated Short, beating another Aardman Studios short, A Grand Day Out. The concept behind its creation is an old one, used by John and Faith Hubley: record conversation and come up with fitting animation. In this case, someone went around interviewing residents of a housing development and the answers were transformed into the answers given to an interviewer by animals in a zoo. Everything here is excellent: animation, dialogue are wonderful. Most definitely worth getting. In print on more than one source: a compilation titled Creature Comforts and on The World's Greatest Animation. Highly recommended.

An interviewer goes to a zoo in order to interview the animals there. Her subjects include polar bears, big cats, an ape, a turtle and others. The subjects of conversation include the weather, their living conditions and what they like to eat.

One of the very first projects from Nick Park and it is still very funny now. The animation looks a little dated but the idea is the same so it's not too bad. My understanding is that real people were interviewed for the voices and the animals were matched up to them – i.e. these aren't scripts.

The end result is hilarious – the animals are matched to their accents and their subject matter really well. By themselves the words would be dull for the majority, while the animation would be merely cute. Together the film is very funny. Some of it is wise and slightly touching but really it's just funny to hear animals talk about their conditions as if they were humans!

This was used for adverts in the UK to great effect and it is responsible for starting Nick park's path to Wallace and Gromit and Oscar fame. Overall a simple idea is turned into a wonderfully bright little short that is worth seeing for anyone who has seen Wallace & Gromit.

Before the "Wallace & Gromit" series and "Chicken Run", Nick Park made a splendid debut with "Creature Comforts", in which several animals in a zoo explain how unhappy they are to be in cages. If the cartoon is goofy, then they play it to good effect, and it has a good message. I've always thought that Nick Park not only has great ideas for cartoons, but that his claymation style is quite neat, with the bug eyes and rectangular mouths.

Other interesting cartoons of this style include not only the "Wallace & Gromit" series, but also "Wat's Pig" and "Ident". The last two are fascinating, if bizarre.

'Creature Comforts' is a nice early work from the creator of the 'Wallace & Gromit'-shorts and the animated feature 'Chicken Run'. It shows a couple of animals in a zoo being interviewed. They tell what they like and dislike in the zoo and their cages. Especially a certain predator gets a lot of laughs while he is talking about the space he needs.

Director Nick Park won an Oscar for this short film and it is not hard to see why. It is not only funny, but very well made as well. He developed his technique further with 'Wallace & Gromit' and 'Chicken Run', but 'Creature Comforts' already showed what Park was capable of. A terrific animated short, highly recommended.