This page uses content from the Nick Park biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

Nicholas Wulstan Park, CBE (b. December 6, 1958) is a four-time Academy Award-winning English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit.

Nick Park was born in Preston in Lancashire, England, and grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons. He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield 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.

In 1985, he joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer") and completed A Grand Day Out. With A Grand Day Out 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 beat Creature Comforts for the BAFTA award, but it was Creature Comforts that won Park his first Oscar.

Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, both winning Oscars. 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 October 5, 2005, to much critical acclaim. The film was rewarded with the Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 78th Annual Awards, March 6, 2006.

Tragedy struck on October 10, 2005, when fire gutted out Aardman Animations' archive warehouse. The fire resulted in the loss of most of Park's creations, including the models and sets used in the hit movie Chicken Run. However, some of the original Wallace & Gromit models and sets, as well as the master prints of the finished films, were elsewhere and survived.

External links

• Nick Park's Myspace
• Nick Park at the Internet Movie Database
• Animation archive up in smoke
• U.S. News & World Report interview
• Podcast Interview with Nick Park

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