Nick Park

Film animator and director, born in Preston, Lancashire, NW England, UK. He studied at Sheffield Hallam University (1980), and went on to study animation at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, near London. In 1985 he joined Aardman Animations in Bristol, where his work included A Grand Day Out (1989), introducing the plasticine characters of Wallace and his dog Gromit. The film won a BAFTA award for Best Short Animated Film in 1990, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same year. He has worked as director and animator on numerous projects, including the Oscar-winning short film Creature Comforts for the Lip Synch series for Channel 4 Television (1989). His later films (with Steve Box) featuring the continuing adventures of Wallace and Gromit are The Wrong Trousers (1993, Oscar Best Short Animated Film), A Close Shave (1995, Oscar Best Short Animated Film), and Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005, Oscar Best Animated Feature Film).

Nick Park

Nick Park holding a model of Wallace from Wallace and Gromit on the red carpet at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
Born:	December 6, 1958 Preston, England
Occupation:	director, animator, writer

Nicholas Wulstan Park, CBE (b. He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) and then went to the National Film and Television School, where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out.

In 1985, he joined the staff of Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he worked as an animator on commercial products (including the video for Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer") and completed A Grand Day Out. A Grand Day Out beat Creature Comforts for the BAFTA award, but it was Creature Comforts that won Park his first Oscar.

Two more Wallace and Gromit shorts, The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995), followed, both winning Oscars.

His second theatrical feature-length film and first Wallace and Gromit feature, Wallace & The film was rewarded with the Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 78th Annual Awards, March 6, 2006. Gromit models and sets, as well as the master prints of the finished films, were elsewhere and survived.