The making of Creature Comforts

Creature Comforts

For Creature Comforts aardman tried to turn something very mundane and boring into something that was interesting to watch and they did this just by turning people they interviewed into animals. Turning them into animals was interesting as it created a character for the person and was funny. 

To make it successful they had to find people that were in similar situations to the animals and characters they were trying to create. What made the animals they created interesting was that they were based around the person they interviewed not around an idea they had before. Also in real interviews people get nervous and so they stubble and say words like "err" "um" and they also dont always say what they actually mean, this makes it very funny when they exaggerate this in the animations. 

The director said that sometimes the best voices were the boring ones as "a boring voice can be boring, but also it can be funny." Over the duration of the series they did over 300 interviews and they only had one director to choose which ones to use. Sometimes they would have a voice that they thought fit with lots of different animals. 

To really understand what the people were saying and what they ment by it they got actors to read through the lines while playing the interview at the same time. Another interesting method that they used to make creature comforts was that they had someone who marked on the tape when there were breaths or pauses etc. This was done for the animators so they could know when to move the mouth of the creature and make it even more realistic. 

My favorite creature comforts animation was the the one with the Lion on the Log, this was because it was very funny when they he talks about wanting fresh meat (as he's portrayed as a lion). Also as he repeats his point about "having space" in Brazil and how he misses it, that is very funny also the animators really show his little mannerisms like him tapping the log. 

The Lion on the Log one can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA5n5Oext5U