Shaun the Sheep’s Christmas adventure – a daring mission to rescue his cute little cousin Timmy

Anyone who’s tuned in to the BBC over recent weeks will likely have caught a glimpse of the sort of madcap activities Shaun the Sheep gets up to in his festive special The Flight Before Christmas. Now you can start counting down the days until the full 30-minute film airs on Christmas Eve.

Joyful, clever, inventive and laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a story that works on many levels so that children and adults alike will enjoy it. It starts just before Christmas at Mossy Bottom Farm where Shaun and his flock live. 

The presents have been wrapped, the feast has been prepared and Shaun, ever the inventor, has come up with an ingenious way to decorate the tree. Then he realises the stockings are not only threadbare, but way too small. 

So he hatches a plan with the rest of the sheep to sneak into the Farmer’s house and pilfer his much larger stockings. But there’s danger ahead, and not just from ever-watchful Bitzer the dog.

Shaun and his flock at Mossy Bottom Farm try to get his little cousin Timmy back from the Christmas market in this year’s 30-minute film airing on Christmas Eve. Pictured: The flock have a feast

Meanwhile, the Farmer has created a super-fizzy drink and plans to sell it at the Christmas market in the village. He’s dressed as Santa, and Shaun’s little cousin Timmy, who like Shaun is disguised as a Christmas present, gets over-excited. 

Before you know it, Timmy, the Farmer and Bitzer are on their way to the market, and the flock have to find a way to get Timmy back. You’ll have to wait to see how a flock of sheep ends up in a flying sleigh…

‘We started with the theme of Christmas spirit – what’s more important, getting loads of presents or spending time with your family?’ says director Steve Cox from the Oscar-winning creative team at Aardman. 

‘And we also looked at the different ways Christmas could be done wrong. Shaun desperately wants these massive stockings full of presents, but what he really needs to do is take care of his family.’

To add to the fun, a new human family has been introduced. Farmer Ben, a celebrity who the Farmer at Mossy Bottom resents, is at the market to turn on the Christmas lights. 

He and his wife Jin are more interested in their phones than in their little girl Ella, so it’s little wonder that when she sees the cute and cuddly Timmy she takes a shine to him.

‘Farmer Ben is based a little bit on Ben Fogle,’ says producer Richard Beek. 

‘We had this idea that the Farmer at Mossy Bottom needed a nemesis, someone who was the perfect farmer, and we thought of Ben who’s so sporty and makes the outdoors look effortless. Then we thought it would be fun to add a family who have their own story to the Farmer Ben character.’

The process of making a Shaun The Sheep film begins at the Aardman studio workshop in Bristol. Pictured: the Farmer and Bitzer at the market

The process of making a Shaun The Sheep film begins at the Aardman studio workshop in Bristol. Pictured: the Farmer and Bitzer at the market

Making a Shaun The Sheep film is a real labour of love, and this one began back in 2018. Stop-motion animation techniques are particularly painstaking – in effect, three different films were made before the actual final movie was even started. 

The process begins at the Aardman studio workshop in Bristol with the story, and then mountains of storyboards are created by artists. Months are spent going over the jokes and writing a script that comprises words which will never actually be used because none of the characters talk. 

The voice cast are then tasked with turning them into noises that will be instantly comprehensible to Shaun fans around the world, whatever language they speak.

How do you put a jumper on when you have four legs?

‘The key is making the animation do the talking for us,’ says Steve. ‘But we do have a sort of language, and it’s a weird thing to ask somebody to do. 

‘They have to let the emotion of what they’re trying to say take over. It can be quite funny as they’re attempting to do it because we go through all sorts of invented noises.’

Then a very rough film – made with simple 2D drawings and called an animatic – is created for the executives to look at, and key elements are discussed. ‘Not everyone always agrees and sometimes we have to fight a little,’ says Richard. 

‘For this film Bitzer is stuck in some ice for quite a long time and we kept getting notes back saying, “Can you afford to spend that much time with a dog stuck in an ice cube?” But we were so convinced it was funny that we kept fighting for it.’

Director Steve Cox from the Oscar-winning creative team at Aardman, pushed from creating four seconds of film a week to 12 seconds by using seasoned animators who were used to working with Shaun. Pictured: Shaun disguised as a present

Director Steve Cox from the Oscar-winning creative team at Aardman, pushed from creating four seconds of film a week to 12 seconds by using seasoned animators who were used to working with Shaun. Pictured: Shaun disguised as a present 

A second film is then made taking in all the notes from the executives – or not. And if that’s approved, a third 2D animatic is made detailing the story shot by shot, expression by expression, vocal by vocal, and with all the music added. And that’s when the real work starts.

Stop-motion animation, in which a camera is repeatedly stopped and started while inanimate objects are moved in the minutest of ways to give them the impression of movement, is incredibly intense. 

Usually with Aardman films, each animator creates just four seconds of film a week, but Steve managed to push that to a whopping 12 seconds by using seasoned animators who were used to working with Shaun. 

Farmer Ben is based a little bit on Ben Fogle 

‘It was super-quick for us, but still really slow compared to everyone else,’ he says. ‘We were very dependent on having a trusted crew and a really good animatic to work from.

‘Before we start each scene, we try to act it out. One of the weirder ones was when our animator Carmen had to work out a shot involving the sheep. Could they be shivering, knitting, dancing and putting jumpers on within six seconds? 

So she had to try it first and we filmed it. The hardest thing for her to work out was how to even put a jumper on when you have four legs.’

Steve said the film has loads of actions, tons of comedy and may be the best Aardman Christmas special yet. Pictured: Timmy with Ella

Steve said the film has loads of actions, tons of comedy and may be the best Aardman Christmas special yet. Pictured: Timmy with Ella

Up to 14 different animators were working on 22 different sets – called units – at the same time at the Bristol studio. The biggest and most complicated set, the Christmas market – which involved the entire cast of characters – was 40ft long and 20ft wide. 

All the sets are made at standing height for the animators and are built on special marine wood which doesn’t expand when it gets wet.

While the original Aardman creations were made out of Plasticine, today the puppets are more sturdy. Shaun has a metal skeleton, his arms and legs are made of silicone, his face of resin and his body is covered in real wool. Plasticine is still used to create the facial expressions, though.

The studio has always depended on the textural look of its films, and for this one acres of white fleece material, sprinkled with marble dust, were used to create snow. Music has always been an important part of Aardman’s shows too, and an incredible 47-piece orchestra was used to create the dramatic soundtrack. 

‘From the start we wanted this to be a mini-movie,’ says Steve. ‘It’s got loads of action, tons of comedy, and while I might be biased I think it’s the best Aardman Christmas special yet.’  

Shaun The Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas, Christmas Eve, 6pm, BBC1.