"With the right access and equipment you can do anything."

December 6, 2007 2:04 AM

Creature discomforts. Aardman Animations has created a charming campaign for Leonard Cheshire Disability that plays off their much-loved BBC series Creature Comforts (for a sample of the original, try birds singing in Welsh or a classically disgruntled Brazilian jaguar). Be sure to check out the voices behind the characters.
posted by melissa may (31 comments total)

On the first link:

"Unfortunately the Adobe Flash 8 Player Plug-in has not been found on your machine or you have JavaScript disabled."

Lies, wicked little lies. But I am using a Mac ... Do you think they might have heard of those? Maybe they need to work on creating a more accessible website.
posted by BrokenEnglish at 2:42 AM on December 6, 2007 [2 favorites]

Ive seen these about - hopefully they will be effective. Actually years ago I had an Aardman Laserdisc with all their best stuff up until like '91' Creature Comforts was ace - love the playful surrealism and the idea of creating animal Doppelgangers of real people. However, what had more staying power for me were the other, more adult animations like Ident and Going Equipped and the one where a puppet Shakespeare and a doll re-renact the whole corpus. I wish they would do more things of that intellectual grade (maybe they do but I've missed them!).
posted by The Salaryman at 2:44 AM on December 6, 2007

These are charming: Nick Park and Aardman are so great. I think I have just about all of Nick Park's films on DVD. My 7-year-old, my wife and I all love all the Aardman stuff. Thanks for posting these.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:58 AM on December 6, 2007

Aardman is wonderful. I also like the stuff they were doing before Nick Park came on board. I once saw an animation that was a recording of a weird interaction in a bank that was given the claymation treatment. I'll be damned if I can remember it's name but it was pretty great. Much cruder than the Nick Park stuff, but just as charming.
posted by Kattullus at 3:07 AM on December 6, 2007

Oh, and the behind the scenes documentary is certainly worth watching, here are parts 1 and 2.
posted by Kattullus at 3:25 AM on December 6, 2007 [2 favorites]

That's lovely, Kattullus -- so much so that I'm surprised it's not linked from the campaign's main site. Many thanks for adding it to the thread.
posted by melissa may at 3:56 AM on December 6, 2007

The behind the scenes documentary was linked from the site but it was a bit hard to find.
posted by Kattullus at 4:13 AM on December 6, 2007

Doesn't work in Firefox on a Mac (PPC, at least), but Safari does fine.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 4:19 AM on December 6, 2007

Cool, thanks for posting this. Random factoid: Nick Park was responsible for the dancing chickens in the video for Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. (apparently if the youtube comments are to be believed, Aardman did the whole thing, which I didn't know)
posted by patricio at 4:36 AM on December 6, 2007

Thanks for this. I'm one of the ignorami - I'd seen snips of various things but didn't know who Nick Park/Aardman were previously. That whole Creature Comforts sentiment/style makes it a perfect vehicle for the disability message. Charming is right.
posted by peacay at 4:48 AM on December 6, 2007

Awesome.
posted by DU at 5:20 AM on December 6, 2007

Creature comforts! I love that show! I must drag out my DVD of it...
posted by LN at 5:23 AM on December 6, 2007

...birds singing in Welsh...

Cwwl!
posted by ZenMasterThis at 5:29 AM on December 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm one of the ignorami...

melissa may and MetaFilter to the rescue!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:55 AM on December 6, 2007

I've seen this once when I was much younger on PBS, but never knew what it was called, or what the premise was.

Maybe its' because I just woke up, but it took me well into a second episode of the creature comforts videos to realize that these are animations of real people being interviewed. I was watching the petshop one, and some of the "animals" were fairly depressing, especially the snake, and chameleons. Exceedingly brilliant.
posted by splatta at 5:57 AM on December 6, 2007

... ignorami ...

I thought that's what happened when the ignorati did origami.
posted by lodurr at 6:05 AM on December 6, 2007

Fun stuff, if you can guess the right browser to use. I got it on the third try. What a sadly inaccessible site.
posted by sidereal at 6:46 AM on December 6, 2007

Thank you. As a Texan I had not seen these adverts. I cried.
posted by Faux Real at 6:53 AM on December 6, 2007

Coincidentally, today is Nick Park's birthday.
posted by Koko at 7:09 AM on December 6, 2007

"With the right access and equipment you can do anything."

Clearly the right equipment isn't Firefox.
posted by Jilder at 7:27 AM on December 6, 2007

The US version of Creature Comforts was great. I can't believe they pulled it. I turned on to at least six people to it during the brief run and they all agreed it was some of the funniest tv they'd ever seen.

/deraily

Firefox on a Mac working fine for me.
posted by papercake at 7:34 AM on December 6, 2007

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, and it does.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:08 AM on December 6, 2007

Ironies about the inaccessibility of an accessibility site aside, I got it just fine in Firefox (2.0.11) on a Mac.
posted by lodurr at 8:23 AM on December 6, 2007

"I would like to live and to spend most of my life in a hot country. You know, in a hot country that I have the good weather and that I have the space and that I have the trees… I need a space with blue skies… that I have nice weather, that I can just have nice water you know to dive, to swim in… any part of the world, but hot! Name it and I go."

I know exactly how that jaguar feels (and that part of Creature Comforts never fails to crack me up). Thanks for posting this melissa may. I really loved the ads.
posted by sleepy pete at 8:49 AM on December 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

The stick insects stick is a baby stick insect! Brilliant.
posted by algreer at 9:19 AM on December 6, 2007

This is all just awesome - love it, these clips have really elevated my day. Great post, Melissa May!
posted by madamjujujive at 9:24 AM on December 6, 2007

I had the same problems viewing it in Firefox. Looking at the page source, the problem was that their Javascript falls over if you've blocked the Google Analytics tracker script. I disabled those rules in Adblock and then I could see the videos just fine.

(I blocked Google Analytics after noticing how much faster most pages load once you do that. Their server is relatively slow to respond.)
posted by hattifattener at 9:42 AM on December 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Great post, thanks!
posted by jquinby at 10:39 AM on December 6, 2007

Ahhh I love Creature Comforts! Here's the full "zoo" video which the jaguar clip comes from. It never fails to crack me up. Thanks for the post, melissa may!
posted by amyms at 10:45 AM on December 6, 2007

how its made: "just a tiny amount"
posted by kev23f at 11:51 AM on December 6, 2007 [2 favorites]

Those are great - thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:44 PM on December 6, 2007