Nicholas Wulstan Park (born 6 December 1958) is an <!--awards and nominations don't belong here--> English filmmaker and animator 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 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".
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. 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.
thumb|left|Park in 2005 promoting [[Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit]]
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.
In 2007 and 2008, Park's work included a United States version of Creature Comforts, a weekly television series that was on CBS every Monday evening at 8 pm ET. In the series, Americans were interviewed about a range of subjects. The interviews were lip-synced to Aardman animal characters.
In September 2007, it was announced that Park had been commissioned to design a bronze statue of Wallace and Gromit, which will be placed in his hometown of Preston. In October 2007, it was announced that the BBC had commissioned another Wallace and Gromit short film to be entitled Trouble at Mill (retitled later to A Matter of Loaf and Death).
Park studied at Preston College, which has since named its library for the art and design department after him: the Nick Park Library Learning Centre. He is the recipient of a gold Blue Peter badge. He was the executive producer of Shaun the Sheep Movie and he also voiced himself in a cameo.
For 2018, he directed another Aardman Animations stop-motion film, titled Early Man, which tells a story of a caveman who unites his tribe against the Bronze Age while unintentionally inventing football.
On 21 May 2019, Park announced that a new Wallace and Gromit project was currently in the works, with no projected release date. In January 2022, Park announced that the project was currently in production as a television film for release in 2024 for the BBC and Netflix. The film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, was first shown on BBC One on Christmas Day 2024, and also featured the return of Wrong Trousers villain Feathers McGraw.
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. He is not known to have children. 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 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
Feature films
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+
!Year
!Title
!Director
!Producer
!Writer
!style="width:65px;" |Voice actor
!Notes
|-
|2000
|Chicken Run|| || || ||
|Co-directed with Peter Lord
|-
|2005
|Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit|| || || ||
|Co-directed with Steve Box
|-
|2015
|Shaun the Sheep Movie|| || || ||
|Voice cameo appearance; characters
|-
|2018
|Early Man|| || || ||
|As role Hognob
|-
|2019
|A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon|| || || ||
|Characters
|-
|2023
| Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget || || || ||
|Characters
|-
|2024
|Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
|
|
|
|
|Co-directed with Merlin Crossingham
|}
Short films
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+
!Year
!Title
!Director
!Writer
!Animator
! style="width:65px;" |Executive producer
!Notes
|-
|1985
|Second Class Mail|| || || ||
|
|-
|1986
|Babylon || || || ||
|
|-
| rowspan="3" |1989
|War Story|| || || ||
|Documentary
|-
|Creature Comforts|| || || ||
|
|-
|Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out|| || || ||
|Also cinematographer
|-
|1993
|Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers|| || || ||
|
|-
|1995
|Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave|| || || ||
|
|-
|1997
|Stage Fright || || || ||
|
|-
|2008
|Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death|| || || ||
|
|-
|2012
|Wallace & Gromit: Jubilee Bunt-a-thon|| || || ||
|
|}
Television and web series
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year !! Title
!Creator
! style="width:65px;" |Producer
!Writer
!Animator
!style="width:65px;"|Voice actor
! Notes
|-
|1986
|Pee-wee's Playhouse|| || || || ||
|Animator for Penny cartoons
|-
|2002
|Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions|| || || || || || rowspan="1" |
|-
| 2003–2006
|Creature Comforts|| |||| || || || rowspan="1" |
|-
| 2007–present
|Shaun the Sheep|| || || || || || rowspan="1" |Including 3D, Championsheeps & The Farmer's Llamas
|-
| 2009–2012
|Timmy Time|| |||| || || || rowspan="1" |
|-
| 2010
|Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention|| |||| || || || rowspan="1" |
|-
| 2011
|The Simpsons|| || || || || || rowspan="1" |Voice cameo in "Angry Dad: The Movie"
|-
|2012
|The BBC Proms|| || || || ||
|<nowiki></nowiki>Prom 20: Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels
|}
Music videos
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+
!Year
!Performer
!Song
!Animator
|-
|1986
|Peter Gabriel
|"Sledgehammer"||
|-
|1996
|Tina Turner & Barry White
|"In Your Wildest Dreams"||
|}
Commercials
- Burger King commercials
- The Electricity Association
Video games
- Wallace & Gromit Fun Pack (1996)
- Wallace & Gromit Fun Pack 2 (1999)
Accolades and honours
thumb|right|Wallace & Gromit bronze sculpture in [[Preston, Lancashire.]]
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.
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
!Year
!Nominated for
!Award
!Category
!Result