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Hi all,

As most of you know I left TGC at the end of January and have since been working for Aardman Animations as their Senior Developer / Technical Lead. for those of you who don't know, Aardman produce films, tv series and adverts, the most famous of which are their Wallace and Gromit films.

Since joining I've been working on the web site for a new TV series called 'Shaun the Sheep'. Shaun was a character in the Wallace and Gromit film 'A Close Shave', probably one of the most popular characters! Anyway he is appearing in a new TV series for CBBC (that's the BBC Childrens channel), each episode being 5 minutes long. I have to admit that for a kids show they are really funny, and the humour is spot-on in typical Aardman fashion.

Anyway I had to build the main .com site and also a mini site for the BBC, both of which are now fully live. The BBC is showing trailers for Shaun already, so catch one if you can Building the site for the BBC was heck of an experience.. they have a 'standards guidelines' document which is pages and pages long, and you have to code everything to follow it all, which is quite a challenge. But the end result is worth it!

Here's the main site, including 6 video clips so you can get an idea of the type of animation / style of show. If you go into the 'Games' section and pick 'Sing-a-long' you can also see the entire title sequence.

http://www.shaunthesheep.com

and here is the site I built for the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/cartoons/shaunthesheep/

The show starts March 5th.

Cheers,

Rich

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Whoa That site is amazing! It must have taking ages to make the site just perfect. And you had to follow several long BBC guidelines too so that must have made the work longer as well, good work

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I must say, I love the Shaun the Sheep theme tune! I know it's irrelevant to the site, but it's still a good tune

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Ok I must have been captured like Jack Bauer was by the Chinese but didn't realise you'd left. Anyway, good luck with your new job rich.


Nice sites, feels cartoony indeed. And that theme is great...de du du do

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Shaun! Lol, I have "A Close Shave" on VHS. Also have the "Grand Day Out" where they go to the moon. Creepy

Aardman stuff sorta wierds me out occasionally, but then so does almost all claymation, but it's always funny. I really enjoy his cartoons when I get to see them.

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Very nice sites Rich

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Awesome !

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Good to see it's working out for you Rich.

Or should that be "crackin' site Gromit!"

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Great sites you got there. But that little nav bar at the bottom of the CBBC one (the one with other shows) annoys me - but thats mainly because I want to vomit anytime I see something from Corneil and Bernie. But the Official Site is very well done.

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OMG!!! im gonna crygenically freeze myself until 5th march!! love the site, and i love the clips to rofl, i just love wallice and gromit

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nice! i love wallace & grommit and that's a nice site!

don't know if you're looking for criticism, but one thing that slightly disturbed me was that the background "ambience" keeps playing when you watch the clips. That might be what you want, since i would guess you've already know that.

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Dude tell me how you get a cool job like that?

I'm sick to death of boring system admin and network engineering roles

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Hey Rich, I am glad to see you around. The site looks absolutely AMAZING but I wouldn't expect anything less. Great Job! And I wish you luck with the new job.

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Congrats on the new site and awesome looking show, Rich When can we expect to see this in Canada?

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cool, like what I see. The sight looks real nice clean but full of content. I might watch the TV show but I live in America. Rick do you know if it will be playing on bbc America?

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I remember that! it's the only episode I ever saw.

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That site looks friggin awesome. Though it looks kind of familiar to me.... *cough* Dark AI *cough* But no, it really does look good.


.. You left and you're still admin. Sweet deal.

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Iz good stuff! I'll have to watch an episode or two. I've done some claymation stuff before and is kind of a hobby of mine. Looks terrific.

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Yeah we're onto that You can turn the sound off and that setting will persist through-out the site thankfully.


Join the club!! It's hideous, but it HAS to be there. Just one of the many many reams of BBC guidelines to adhere to. It even has to be 'above the scroll'. Ick.

The show has been sold to something like 71 broadcasters world wide, so there is EVERY chance it will be out in Canada, America, etc. I'll keep you posted when we get some transmission dates.


I left full-time, but I'm still doing lots of freelance work for TGC (the recent updates to SkyMATTER, DB, etc for example).

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Ninja, Wallace and Gromit are some of the best stop-motion animation you'll ever see, this guy started as a student with one little film, and that just blew people away, the characters, the humour, but most importantly the seemingly impossible stop motion skills . Wallace has more personality than most British stars.

I've always been a fan of stop motion, you had to be as a British kid in the early eighties - one series I always recommend is 'Trap Door', grab the DVD of that, and you'll see why theres so many demented 30-somethings around here .

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Great site, it gets the whole family's approval.

Having seen all the films, all the Creature Comforts series, having a DVD of all the Aardman stuff pre-Nick Park, and a 3 year old daughter that does a perfect impression of Wallace with 2 tomatoes in her cheeks (Smashing Cheese Grommit!), you could say I'm a fan.

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Very nice

But...
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Neither site validates fully (the .com version is fine except for 3 warnings:
line 36 column 4 - Warning: missing </a> before <div>
line 38 column 10 - Warning: discarding unexpected </a>
line 95 column 53 - Warning: missing <li>

And the BBC site is just totally demented. But I blame that on BBC themselves!