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• Born on December 6, 1958, in Lancashire, England, Nick Park made his first stop-motion film at age 13. 

• After joining Aardman Animations Ltd. in 1985, he created the famed Wallace and Gromit Claymation shorts about a shortsighted inventor and his dog. 

• Park has won multiple Academy Awards for his films, while the popularity of Wallace and Gromit have spawned several attractions throughout the United Kingdom.

• Park enjoyed drawing comics and adopted his father's habit of collecting spare parts from around the neighborhood as a young boy.

• Park began using his mom's 8-millimeter camera and pieces from her dressmaking kit to create stop-motion films, and at age 13 he finished his first short, Walter the Rat. 

• Park studied art at Sheffield City Polytechnic before moving on to the National Film and Television School, where he began work on his first 35-millimeter Claymation film. A Grand Day Out tells the tale of a middle-aged man named Wallace, who builds a homemade rocket and takes his quietly frustrated but faithful dog Gromit into space to procure some moon cheese

• Having secured Hollywood's attention, Park and Lord co-directed Chicken Run (2001), a feature-length animation film distributed by DreamWorks Studios. A feature-length Wallace and Gromit adventure co-directed by Park and Steve Box, The Curse of the Ware-Rabbit (2005) also fared well for Aardman and DreamWorks, but the two studios soon ended their association due to creative differences.