Nick Park: A Model Animator

John Martz discusses his chat with Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit:

I particularly enjoyed hearing about how my favourite character from Creature Comforts was created: the Brazilian jaguar. Nick interviewed many people at the zoo about the animals, but found that the resulting answers didn’t offer him exactly what he was looking for. So he mixed up the questions, and in addition to animals, he asked questions about the people themselves, and later spliced the answers together to create the desired effect, which is why it’s never quite sure what the characters have been asked in the final film. The Jaguar’s voice was a travelling Brazilian student who complained about British food and the size of the rooms he stayed in, which fit perfectly with the themes of Creature Comforts. Nick mentions, however, that instead of a jaguar, the voice was originally going to be given to a sinister animal that showed up later in his work: a penguin.