live action, based on the books of Beverly Cleary. John Clark Matthews was the animation director, with Justin Kohn, Joel Fletcher, and Gail Van Der Merwe providing character animation. The company also produced other films based on children's books. From 1986 to 2000, over 150 five-minute episodes of Pingu, a Swiss children's comedy, were produced by Trickfilmstudio. Aardman Animations' Nick Park became very successful with his short claymation Creature Comforts in 1989, which had talking animals voicing vox pop interviews. Park then used the same format to produce a series of commercials between 1990 and 1992. The commercials have been credited as having introduced a more "caring" way of advertising in the UK. Richard Goleszowski later directed two 13-episode Creature Comforts TV series (2003, 2005–2006) and a Christmas special (2005). Also in 1989, Park introduced his very popular clay characters Wallace and Gromit in A Grand Day Out. Three more short films and one feature film and many TV adaptions and spin-offs would follow. Among many other awards, Park won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the feature-length outing Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Park also worked on the Chicken Run movie, which was another film from Aardman Animations. 1990s In 1992, Trey Parker and Matt Stone made The Spirit of Christmas (short film), a short cutout animated student film made with construction paper. In 1995 they made a second short with the same titled, commissioned as a Christmas greeting by Fox Broadcasting Company executive Brian Graden. The concepts and characters were further developed into the TV hit series South Park (since 1997). Except for the pilot, all animation has been created on computers in the same style. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, was one of the more widely released stop-motion features and become the highest grossing stop-motion animated movie of its time, grossing over $50 million domestic. Henry Selick also went on to direct James and the Giant Peach and Coraline, and Tim Burton went on to direct Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie. The stop-motion feature The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb was released in 1993. In November 1998, the first episode of Bob the Builder released on BBC. Bob the Builder was a popular British stop-motion television series created by Keith Chapman & produced and owned by HIT Entertainment. In 1999, Will Vinton launched the