Aardman Animation’s Creature Comfort characters are familiar to pretty much anyone who enjoys charming animation and has eyes, so it’s a joy to see their roster being expanded to include creatures with disabilities. Created for the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability, the campaign’s aim is to challenge and change attitudes towards disabled people.
Using the real voices and experiences of several disabled individuals, the talented animators have, once again, modelled endearing plastercine representations to communicate the messages, including a bull terrier in a wheelchair (voiced by Kevin Gillespie - pictured below) and a stick insect with a walking stick.
Bryan Dutton, Director General, Leonard Cheshire Disability said: “We want people to change the way they see disability, to think and act differently and to make a positive difference to the lives of disabled people.”
“Disabled people experience unnecessary social barriers which are created largely through ignorance. In the twenty-first century it is unacceptable that such negative attitudes to disability still persist. Everyone has a part to play in creating a world in which disabled people are included in every aspect of life.”
“Creature Comforts is well known and much-loved for its ability to bring home messages in a simple, everyday way. Our Creature Discomforts campaign builds on this, making a serious point with humour.”
Without losing any of the engaging wit and charisma that made previous Creature Comfort shorts so appealing, this new campaign puts forward its point in an unfussy, successful manner. Speaking of the experience, director Steve Harding-Hill said: “Leonard Cheshire Disability’s new campaign is an important step towards changing everyone’s attitudes to disability. Working on it has been an amazing experience for us all at Aardman … taking the real voices and experiences of disabled people and creating animated stories that are informative, entertaining and poignant has been an immense but incredibly satisfying challenge.”
Launching in bus stops, print and online – www.creaturediscomforts.com for a preview – from Thursday, this smart use of a recognisable animation for a worthy cause has utterly won over all at Reel Towers. For full credits and all four films in the campaign, check out our website.
