My Green Life Things I love, things I hate, and things I just don’t understand

I’m going to come out of the toy-chest here and reveal that I watch Shaun The Sheep. Yes it might nominally be a kids’ show, but if you think of it as “Wallace and Gromit Lite” then it’s not a bad way to spend a few minutes of downtime. Besides, you only have to look at the list of references to popular culture on Wikipedia to realise that it’s not aimed solely at children.

So I was quite pleased when I noticed that my MythTV box had recorded a couple of episodes that I hadn’t noticed in the schedules: it turns out that the second series has started. I settled down to watch it with my girlfriend (who is quite the Shaun fan) only to raise my eyebrows at what they’d done to the farmer.

The farmer used to look like this:

[Original Source]

Now he looks like this:

[Original Source - zip file of images]

The key difference isn’t easy to spot in those images, so I’ve combined and re-oriented them to make it a bit clearer:

The key point is the line running around the farmer’s mouth. It’s a lot more pronounced on the show itself. It appears to me that Aardman have decided to speed up their work (or reduce costs, depending on how you look at it) by making the mouth section removable. This lets them animate the mouth movement independently of the rest of the body – and indeed the rest of the head. They did a similar trick on Chicken Run, where it was less noticeable due to the difference in colour and texture between the chickens’ beaks and faces. It stands out more on the farmer, but it’s not too bad, as it generally just makes it look like he’s got a five o’clock shadow.

So, a reasonably subtle change to the design of the farmer. He’s a secondary character anyway, so it wasn’t too distracting. But next to the eponymous Shaun, possibly the most prominent character is the farmer’s dog, Bitzer. Yes, you’ve guessed it, they’ve changed that character too. But unlike the relatively minor change to the farmer’s face, Bitzer has had a complete overhaul. And not in a good way.

Old Bitzer:

[Original Source]

New Bitzer:

[Original Source - zip file of images]

The new Bitzer has acquired a furry texture… but not on his head. Maybe I missed the episode titled “Bitzer gets alopecia”. Perhaps the hair loss is a side effect of his efforts to dye his fur, as indicated by the colour change on his chest, throat and lower jaw. That’s the most egregious change and one which, in my opinion, really spoils the design of the character. It’s pretty obvious that, much like the farmer, they’ve decided to reduce costs by making the mouth into a removable section, independent of the rest of the head. But on the Bitzer model the distinction between the two parts – especially once animated – makes it look like Bitzer has been attacked by a bestial Hannibal Lecter, and his skin turned into a mask covering the top of the imposter’s face.

Watch out Shaun, I think there might be a serial killer on the farm. One who plans to destroy your very soul. I think his name is Aardman.

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