A making of film from the second series is now available at the Making the Ads link. In it, you can hear more from the voices behind the characters, as well as contributions from the team at Aardman and Leonard Cheshire Disability.

In addition, the making of film for the first series is still available for those who haven’t seen it.

So, if you’re an aspiring animator or just want to find out more about the campaign, take a look now.

You can send cards to up to ten friends at a time, up to five times a day. So what better way to contact people and share the humour of the Creature Discomforts characters, and the important message of our campaign at the same time?

You can preview the e-cards on offer here.

Over the coming weeks you’ll see more commercials, and a few surprises, on this site, and look out for our new Creature Discomforts characters on TV, posters and radio. If you’d like to meet the characters now, check out our Behind the Characters section.

We last saw Callum at design stage, with the model and background set being constructed. The next step is stop-motion animation itself - a painstaking process. The animator takes a single frame of film, then makes the smallest changes to the character, or background, before taking another single frame. This process continues for several days - each Creature Discomforts commercial has more than 600 frames of animation. You can see some of this process, and hear Director Steve Harding-Hill, in this short making of clip.

Finally, any rods or other supports for the characters are digitally removed, sound effects are added to the animation (which is shot silently), the original voice is laid onto the film, and the finished film is graded for broadcast.

Callum’s full commercial will be shown exclusively on this website on Wednesday 9th July. But in the meantime, here’s a quick preview.

I think Creature Discomforts is a step towards changing people’s perception of disABLED people because it portrays all of us as one, and we do have a brain for want of a better word. Obviously, it will take more time and more of the campaign to get the message over - we do have a voice and hopefully continual campaigning will do the trick, let’s hope so. It has definitely got the general public in my area talking about it. On the few occasions I have been into shops, people have commented “I’ve heard your voice before, aren’t you the sausage dog in the TV advertisements?”. So, it shows people are paying attention to what is happening in the world of disability.

I hope series 2 will be even better, I’m sure it will. I think Leonard Cheshire Disability chose Aardman Animations as an excellent vehicle for re-branding of the organisation. This being said I think it was unintentionally based on wheelchair users rather than including other disabilities whether they need crutches, walking sticks or no aid at all.

After I did the TV interviews for series one their switchboard had been jammed with people saying it should have been more broad based into disability including other disabilities. I hope with series two this will be sorted.

Alex Milhaly, voice of Flash the Sausage Dog

First, we interviewed dozens of disabled people about their experiences, and from these, we selected six individuals who will voice the characters. Christopher is the voice of Callum, and you can hear a clip from his interview here:chameleon-audio-clip

Next, the team at Aardman Animation think what character would go with that voice. For Christopher, who is visually impaired, they came up with a chameleon, who we’ve called Callum. Here’s one of the original design sketches:

Now, before the stop motion animators can get to work, a rough ‘animatic’ is made, essentially an animated storyboard of the film with the clip of Christopher’s voice over the top. Here’s an extract from the animatic for Callum:

Meanwhile, the modellers at Aardman have been turning the sketch of Callum into a three dimensional plasticine figure, and designing the set on which the animation will be shot:

Check back soon for Part 2, and an exclusive clip from the finished ad.