and producer of the film, Roald Dahl was very supportive to the studio in production. During production of the film, which took over 3 years, 750,000 cels were used against watercolour backgrounds designed by a team led by DC Thomson cartoonist John Geering. The film also used the rotoscoping technique for some of the characters, particularly for Queen Elizabeth II and her servants. Initially, the technique was used while animating Sophie, but it was soon discovered that Jean Flynn and Meryl Edge could animate Sophie's movements without a reference. Reception Writing in The Sunday Times before its broadcast, Patrick Stoddart called it a "delight", and wrote that it "puts its already celebrated British animators, Cosgrove Hall, into the Disney class". It has since gone on to be a cult classic. In 2016, Louisa Mellor, of the Den of Geek website, warmly appraised the film in comparison to Steven Spielberg's then just-released adaptation, saying, "Cosgrove Hall's twenty-seven year old animated feature may be less of a technical feat than the latter and was certainly made for a fraction of the budget, but that doesn't make it any less a whoppsy-whiffling, razztwizzling tribute to a terrific story." Roald Dahl's reaction This film was the only adaptation of Dahl's works released during his lifetime to get praise from the author himself. Cosgrove said that after Dahl sat through a screening of the film, he stood up and applauded in delight. Media releases The film was first released on VHS by Video Collection International in the United Kingdom on 17 September 1990, in collaboration with Thorn EMI's Thames Video Collection. It was released again by the same company on 25 September 1995 and 13 October 1997. Roadshow Home Video and ABC Video released the film on VHS in Australia on 12 February 1992, while its first video release in the United States was by Celebrity Home Entertainment on 2 April 1996. Pearson Television International Ltd re-released the film on VHS on 2 July 2001, and on DVD for the first time on 8 April 2002. The DVD features 3 interactive games, an interview with Brian Cosgrove, a photo gallery and storyboards. Another release followed on 1 January 2008 by Pearson's successor, Fremantle Home Entertainment. The film's first DVD release in the United States was distributed by Celebrity Home Entertainment on 28 September 1999. It was re-released by A&E Home Video on 27 June 2006.