Creature Comforts: Season 2, Part One

Most people have no idea - I had no idea and I am supposed to know about these things - what goes into an animated film. Aardman is different in the sense that it uses claymation rather than puppets, CGI or hand drawings. Of course, all you have to do is think about it for half a second and you would realise that to ask a plasticine cat to pick up a plasticine mouse and whack it about a bit, while carrying on a reasonable conversation, might require a team of artists, model makers, set designers and sound technicians to spend a week, or more. But you don't. Animation is an undervalued art form.

Behind The Scenes, subtitled Eyeball & Fishlips, is a fascinating documentary, directed by Dan Sinclair, that opens the warehouse doors and, with admirable good humour, divulges the Aardman secrets and introduces the creative team, responsible for Creature Comforts 2 - 40 people for a year, or, as someone says, "Four seconds of animation a day."

Creating Creature Comforts 2: Rehearsals offers an insight into the director's method of "blocking" the scenes. He and occasional members of staff act the animals' parts, while speaking the lines and being filmed. Their movements and expressions are reproduced on the plasticine figures. You watch the strictly amateur, often hilarious rehearsals, followed by the same scene "performed" by the "creatures."

People Behind The Puppets is another chance to meet "the voices" of the slugs, the Geordie rat, the bats and the droopy dog with foldover skin (and strong Welsh accent). They talk about what they feel, being used as vocal fodder for a TV show, except for one of the bats, who is either deaf, or off the planet, because she gives answers to questions that were never asked.

In addition, there is a Countryside Code short, which looks like a commercial, and the trailer for W & G: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit.