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Welcome to the first of our weekly Aardman roundups!
There’s a heck of a lot of news coming out of Aardman every single week, especially with the help of Twitter where lots of important Aardman folk tweet lots of Aardman updates! But you might not want to follow every single thing, you might just fancy a handy digestible guide.
So this is the scheme we’ve devised. You can follow us on Twitter (@62wwsnews) and hear the latest news, gossip, fun facts, and more from across Aardman, but every week we’ll post a roundup of the most important news right here too.
So without further ado...
Kingsmill Promotion
You could well have heard this news before, but big pushes have been ongoing this week to ensure everyone knows about the campaign...
Special packs of Kingsmill bread have cutout coupons on them, and collecting up enough coupons allows you to get hold of some great exclusive Wallace and Gromit items!
First is the ‘Rapide-O-Matic Preserves Dispenser’, a brilliantly designed piece modelled after Wallace and Gromit’s famous motorbike and sidecar. You can insert a spoon and pot of jam (or any other preserve!) and it has a ‘wind up and go’ feature so you can zoom it across the table. It gives a very ‘Wallace’ solution to someone requesting that you “pass the marmalade”!
The ‘Lunch-O-Safe Lunchbox’ is pretty self explanatory (it’s a shame it doesn’t come with a drinks bottle perhaps?), but the ‘Egg&Soldier Holders’ look wonderful – they come as a pair and you place an egg in the head of Wallace or Gromit, while the back has slots for your bread soldiers!!
All three are great fun, but you do need a lot of tokens to complete the set! You’ve got until the end of September to send in your applications, and full details (along with a competition) can be found on the official website: http://www.kingsmillwallaceandgromit.com/.
On a related note, with thanks to Jordan for the tipoff, there’s a very interesting article about the last Kingsmill promotion here: http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/forum/read/47615/1
Home Sheep Home App
Home Sheep Home, the Aardman devised online game that proved to be a runaway success, has come to the iPhone!
You can buy the app for £0.59, and I highly recommend it. I’ve tried it out and found the gameplay to be just as addictive and fun as on the computer. You essentially have to get Shirley, Timmy and Shaun across the screen – crossing over certain obstacles. Each one requires a different sheep to perform a different task, and it’s addictively fun to work out the solution.
There aren’t that many levels, however you play against the clock and going back to try and beat your best score keeps the game going a lot longer than it otherwise would. For any Shaun fan it’s the perfect app to keep on your phone for when you have a few minutes spare and want to be entertained.
Buy today from the App Store!
‘Pirates!’ Information released!
The shroud of mystery surrounding the upcoming animated feature film from Aardman, ‘The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists’ (based on the book of the same name - directed by Peter Lord), has been further dislodged this past week with news of casting revealed – and the first official publicity shot!
The cast is led by none other than Hugh Grant as the Pirate Captain, and Peter Lord has spoken very highly of his performance.
Hugh Grant, starring in his first animated role, is the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain – a boundlessly enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas. With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award. It’s a quest that takes our heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London. Along the way they do battle with the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) and team up with a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!
The film is co-directed by Jeff Newitt. The screenplay is by Gideon Defoe, based upon his books. Production Designer is Norman Garwood. Producers are Peter Lord, David Sproxton, and Julie Lockhart. Executive Producer is Carla Shelley.
There are some fantastic names in that cast, and it is set to be released in 3D on March 30th 2012 – much earlier than I had anticipated I must admit. It will have only taken 3-4 years in production by my calculations, much faster than the 5 years of both ‘Chicken Run’ and ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’. You can follow official ‘Pirates!’ updates on their new Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/jointhepiratecaptain.
And finally…
We roundup our roundups with something fun we’ve found online – and this week it’s from John of http://filmfingers.tumblr.com/. I happened to spot this photo on Twitter, and I think it’s great fun! You can follow John by going to http://twitter.com/casioroee.
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13th May 2011
