Nicholas Wulstan Park was born on 6 December 1958 and is an English animator and filmmaker who created Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man.
26 Facts About Nick Park
2.
Nick Park has received five BAFTA Awards, including the BAFTA for Best Short Animation for A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was the most watched television programme in the United Kingdom in 2008.
3.
Nicholas Wulstan Nick Park was born on 6 December 1958 in Preston, Lancashire, to seamstress Mary Cecilia and Roger Wulstan Nick Park, an architectural photographer.
4.
Nick Park grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons, and as a 13-year-old made films with the help of his mother and her home film camera and cotton bobbins.
5.
Nick Park took after his father, an amateur inventor, and would send homemade items like a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools in to Blue Peter.
6.
Nick Park studied Communication Arts at Sheffield City Polytechnic and then went to the National Film and Television School, where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out.
7.
In 1985, Nick Park joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products.
8.
Nick Park 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.
9.
In 1990, Nick Park worked alongside advertising agency GGK to develop a series of highly acclaimed television advertisements for the "Heat Electric" campaign.
10.
Nick Park then made his first feature-length film, Chicken Run, co-directed with Aardman founder Peter Lord.
11.
Nick Park supervised a new series of Creature Comforts films for British television in 2003.
12.
The fire resulted in the loss of some of Nick Park's creations, including the models and sets used in the movie Chicken Run.
13.
In September 2007, it was announced that Nick Park had been commissioned to design a bronze statue of Wallace and Gromit, which will be placed in his home town of Preston.
14.
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.
15.
Nick Park is the recipient of a gold Blue Peter badge.
16.
Nick Park had his first acting role in February 2011, voicing himself in a cameo on The Simpsons episode "Angry Dad: The Movie".
17.
The video was filmed at Birkdale School, Sheffield, and Nick Park selected the track as one of his Desert Island Discs when he went on the show in 2011, which led to suggestions that Nick Park was using his fame to give a friend a leg up in his career.
18.
Nick Park denied these claims, insisting it had become one of his favourite songs.
19.
Nick Park was the executive producer of Shaun the Sheep Movie and he voiced himself in a cameo.
20.
On 21 May 2019, Nick Park announced that a new Wallace and Gromit project is currently in the works, with no projected release date.
21.
In January 2022, Nick Park announced that a new untitled television film is currently in production for release at Christmas 2024 for the BBC and Netflix.
22.
The Daily Telegraph remarked Nick 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.
23.
Nick Park married Mags Connolly at the Gibbon Bridge Hotel near Chipping on 16 September 2016.
24.
Nick Park has stated that his main influences have been Ray Harryhausen, Oliver Postgate, Peter Firmin, Chuck Jones, Yuri Norstein, Richard Williams, Terry Gilliam, and Bob Godfrey.
25.
Nick Park is a fan of The Beano comic, and guest-edited the 70th-anniversary issue dated 2 August 2008.
26.
Nick Park 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.