h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Ultimate Aardman Animated Film Guide - A87850731
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

Reasons why Aardman are more successful than Disney:

If we ignore 'Shaun the Sheep' which is still on general release and so we don't have its final box office figure yet, all Aardman films have been profitable, from the extremely successful 'Chicken Run' to the disappointing 'Flushed Away'.

Disney has had numerous box office flops. If you compare Aardman's first films with Disney's first few animated films, 'Pinnochio', 'Fantasia', 'Bambi', 'The Reluctant Dragon' and 'Victory Thru Air Power' all completely flopped. You might think that's unfair to compare the 21st Century with the early 20th, so if you look at Disney's animated films since 2000, Treasure Planet and Home on the Range both flopped, 'Fantasia 2000' and 'Doug's 1st Movie' broke even just and 'Mars Needs Moms' was an unprecedented disaster.

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I'm a fan of Aardman's work, so I've seen many of these

I was confused by the introduction in places - did Tony Hart present Vision On too? Also they were commissioned to make clay animation but made cel animation instead - why was that?

Thanks for reading through – I've reworded the introduction to hopefully make it clearer.

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Right, time to get this going with some nitpicks!

"possibly best loved animation studios" - hyphen please (best-loved)

"commissioned to make clay animation short entitled 'Greebies'"
- make *a* clay animation short

"Thirty years later the company was making outstanding feature films, dominating the field of stop-motion animation although they have also ventured into computer animation also."
-->
"Thirty years later the company was making outstanding feature films and dominating the field of stop-motion animation, though they have also ventured into computer animation."

"In 1985 Nick Nick Park" - Is the second Nick a mistake, or is it a nickname?

"but though this was unfinished" --> "and although this was unfinished"

"provided the outstanding animation for music videos" - you've already used 'outstanding' in the opening paragraph. Is there some other way you could communicate the quality of these videos?

"casual comments were animated to have been said by various animals in a zoo"
-->
"casual comments were set to animations of various zoo animals"

"Then in the early 1990s the BBC commissioned two more short Wallace and Gromit stories followed;" - you haven't previously mentioned Wallace and Gromit, so you've got a little bit of explaining to do here.

"Having consolidated their position as at the forefront of British animation"
-->
position at the (remove the 'as')

"animated film market, and having their own cel-animation and computer animation departments, were keen to"
-->
market and, having their (move the comma)

Tufty!

Good to see you again. Yes, I've been keeping busy (at least at the start of the year, I've not actually written anything for ages). I look forward to hearing about everything you've been up to.

I've made changes to this as you suggested, there weren't any changes that I didn't agree with or I felt needed further explanation.

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Oh, the usual. Busy enough not to have time to take on huge uni projects

I'm reading this again, as it looks nearly ready to me I just have a few more comments:

In Chicken Run "Despite his broken wing, he promises to teach them all how to fly." - teach all the chickens to fly, I presume, not the Tweedys.

"a little harmless dietry brain alteration experiment" - perhaps this needs just a bit more explanation - was it brain alteration to help with dieting, or something like that?

Was Flushed Away the film that was to be about pirate rats, or another film?

In Pirates! "The film's trailer was criticised by Lepra Health in Action for promoting derogatory stereotypes of leprosy, although the scene was changed in the finisihed film." - what scene?

Do we know how Shaun the Sheep did at the box office now?

Thanks for the read through, a few little tweaks made. Hopefully it is all clearer now.

According to StudioCanal's website, 'Shaun the ' cost $21m to make and back in September passed the $100m mark, which means it is currently the 6th most successful stop-motion film of all time (behind 'Chicken Run', 'Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit', 'Coraline', 'The Pirates! In and Adventure with Scientists!' and 'Corpse Bride'), but as it is still out on release it could potentially overtake 'Corpse Bride'. Successful enough for there to be serious thought about making a sequel at the moment, especially considering it was made without Hollywood backing.

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Spot on

Ah, I didn't know Shaun's box office was still open - that's very impressive so far

Unlike the big Hollywood studios that have established distributor networks, StudioCanal has had to find a different distributor in each country, which takes time. Surprisingly, in the US 'Shaun the Sheep' was considered to be a silent film which didn't have any famous actors attached and most distributors felt it would not do well.

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