Shaun the Sheep

Painstaking work

Characters in Shaun the Sheep move 25 times per second, meaning animators have to reset scenes 1,500 times for just one minute of footage.

They bag an average of seven seconds of footage a day.

While that may not sound like much, compared to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of The Were-Rabbit and Chicken Run, they are working at breakneck speed.

Wallace and Gromit averaged around three seconds of footage a day, while the animators on Chicken Run considered two a good day's work.

Dogsbody work

Bitzer the mongrel - consisting of "bits of this, bits of that" - was made yellow to give a good contrast to the sheep.

"Some of the characters are easier to animate than others, and Bitzer has never been popular," says Chris.

"He has to do a lot of physical things but isn't really the right shape to do them. He is made a silicone too and splits quite a lot!"

Bitzer tries to keep the sheep in line, but even he can't help but get involved in some of Shaun's antics