Shaun, Timmy and pals celebrate the holidays with fantastically fun new half-hour special Shaun The Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas. It premieres this Friday Dec. 3rd on Netflix. Director Steve Cox shares some inside secrets about making Aardman’s latest delightful creation — and why Timmy loves another jolly man with the initials S.C.

Jackson Murphy: You’ve lived and breathed this world and these characters through your work on this, the Shaun series, the first Shaun movie and more. I’ve loved the series Timmy Time, which was on Disney Channel here in the states. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like working on that show?

Steve Cox: It was my first job at Aardman, and it was… the first preschool show for Aardman. We brought all of our know-how of how to do a real young kids show. Timmy, of course, is such a gorgeous character [who] has existed within Shaun the Sheep. The producers and directors at that time said, “Let’s make a show about him.” And it was a real big success.

JM: It was a huge success, and it’s been on Netflix now and on DVD. I can’t wait to show my three year old cousin — who also has a teddy named Teddy — I can’t wait to show him Timmy Time.

SC: It’s a great show and lovely characters, which obviously Aardman is famous for.

JM: Yes, gorgeous look to the animal characters and that humor for all ages. And you’ve definitely got that in The Flight Before Christmas. Timmy, Shaun and the others bring me so much joy — they’ve brought so many of all ages so much joy over the years. What is the secret to their success? What’s the magic of these characters?

SC: Shaun himself as a character is such a cheeky little fellow. And he always get into all sorts of scrapes but his heart is in the right place. He might start off on the wrong foot, but he always ends-up in the right place. And there’s nobody out there who doesn’t like somebody who’s a bit naughty, a bit cheeky, doing the wrong thing and that’s Shaun through and through. He always comes good in the end, and that’s what we wanted to say with our Christmas story.

JM: Absolutely. One of the aspects at the beginning — and one of the reasons why this special is so entertaining and so sweet — we’ve got Timmy, and I love watching him and his love and awe of Santa. How did you want to portray that?

SC: That was one of our main storylines. We thought: Timmy is focused on Santa. That’s all he cares about. Whether he’ll get rewarded in the end, that’s for the viewers to see. We had this great idea of dressing The Farmer up as Santa. And before that, Timmy sees Santa on his Advent calendar. The countdown to Christmas is all about Santa. He makes this little Santa toy out of a toilet roll with some fluff from mom’s hair and all the stuff kids do with their crafts at school. He’s really focused on Santa. He’s like a little wind-up toy. He sees Santa. That’s what he’s doing. He’s heading to see Santa.

JM: So many little kids can relate to that: seeing Santa at the mall or out and about. There’s also an element in this… involving social media and influencers. You have a lot of very smart commentary on that.

SC: We addressed it a little bit in the first Shaun film, actually. It’s such a big part of our everyday lives and we like to keep Shaun and all Aardman characters up to date. We introduced this character in [Season] 6 of Shaun the Sheep called Farmer Ben. We thought, “Let’s bring him back” because he was such a popular character. He was an influencer. He was a farmer and a foil to our farmer, who we’re all used to. But he was this perfect guy who’s always on social media. His farm was perfect, whereas our Farmer, who we all know has a slightly trashy farm, things don’t work very well. It’s all a bit wonky. This guy: his teeth are white. Ding! He’s perfect. So we thought we’d bring him back, bring back the social media thing because he’s an influencer. That’s his focus. This story is about what’s important for Christmas and half of the characters have got it wrong at the beginning. Farmer Ben’s wrong take on Christmas is it’s all about his social media thing. He has to learn by the end of the story it’s not about that. It’s about family, which is what we’re aiming for for all the characters.

JM: Definitely. And this special is 30 minutes long, but you pack-in so much. You pack a feature or two features worth of jokes and visual gags. I was laughing a couple times every minute. Fans who love the show and the two movies will as well. Is there any trimming that goes on? Any editing whatsoever, or do you just throw it all at us?

SC: (laughs) I’ll tell you what: it was heartbreaking the amount of stuff we had to cut out. There’s so much jammed in there, right? It’s absolutely packed full of good stuff, but there’s an equal amount that sat to the side here that didn’t make it into the film that was really tough to decide what to put in and what not to put in.

JM: Wow.

SC: And you’re right: it’s non-stop, isn’t it? It’s really full-on gags, action, lots of heart, lots of warmth. At one stage I was wondering, “Is it too much here? Are people gonna be able to keep up?” But I think we got a good balance.

JM: Oh yeah. People are. But that’s crazy that half of the amount of jokes are sitting off to the side. Do you put them aside and then think, “Okay, maybe down the line they can be incorporated somewhere else — a different way”?

SC: Yeah. They’re all there. There are so many people who contribute to this. Everybody here at Aardman is a comedian. Everybody’s got a joke. Everybody comes-up with a funny little visual or something like that. It’s very collaborative. And when we come to make the next thing, we might have these jokes that we didn’t use ready to go. But I guarantee there will be a whole bunch of new ones that we’ll try to cram in. And it’s just loads of fun trying to work these things out and improve them each time. You start off with a little joke. Then it gets better and somebody says, “What about this? What about this?” And it just builds and builds until you’ve got this fantastic joke.

JM: I wanna get into some of the technical aspects. I love the crackling sounds of boots and feet on the snow. How do you pull that off?

SC: We have our guy, Adrian [Rhodes] who does all the sound. He’s been doing sound for Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run and all the projects all through history. He’s absolutely fantastic. He’s got a library of stuff that he’s been building up for decades. He also has this massive studio at his house. Big screen and all sorts of stuff lying around to make noises with. And because we were doing this during COVID times, I was talking to him like I’m talking to you, on Zoom. Most of the stuff he did for us was recorded at his house or taken at his library and then we discussed it over Zoom. He’d send it to us, we’d look through it and we’d say, “Yes, this is really working” or “This isn’t quite there.” He’s so good at his craft that it took very little extra from me.

JM: And you really continue to advance the art form of stop-motion. Aardman always does. I watched Robin Robin as well. You continue to advance it in this special with the car, sleigh and Bitzer sliding to the house sequence. How were you able to make that work? Talk about movement. Wow.

SC: The ski chase was always gonna be one of our big moments in the film. Like you said before, this film is half an hour long and to fit a chase right in the middle of it… Originally the ski chase was gonna be 10 minutes long, and that would’ve taken up a third of the film. So we had to trim the gags and the action out of that but we had loads of big sets. We had some blue screen for the backgrounds. We worked out what kind of shots we wanted, what dynamic angles, what kind of camera moves and we thought, “This is the place to put them, in the ski chase.” We used all of our previous knowledge on doing chases to squeeze real good stuff in there. And then we have a big money shot at the end of the chase where they all arrive at their destination and it’s one of the epic images I had in my head at the beginning of the filmmaking process.

JM: That’s great that what you had in your head exactly translated to what we see on the screen. Do you find that’s rare because things change so much along the way?

SC: It’s 50/50, really. Sometimes you have these big shots or big moments in your head and those ones stay because you build everything else around them. But the Shaun the Sheep team here at Aardman: they’re so good at their jobs. They’ve been doing Shaun the Sheep for 20 years. They can do it with their eyes closed if they wanted to. But on this they pulled out all the stops and you ask for something and they can do it. They know exactly what they’re doing.

JM: Good. At one point in this, Bitzer gets into a block of ice. And as I’m watching him and his hijinks, I go, “How do you move him inside the block of ice?” How do you really do that, Steve?

SC: It’s a challenge, isn’t it? It was one of the things we talked about in the writing process. We thought, “This is a great gag because he’s waddling around in a block of ice.” And in the back of my head I thought, “I’m gonna have to make this happen somehow.” When we got to the storyboarding phase, we drew it and it looked really funny in the storyboards. And when we finally got to the studio and started working with the model makers and the team here, we sat around and brainstormed some ideas and the model making team came-up with the idea of 3D printing a box. And we had Bitzer inside. It has this little hatch — this secret hatch — and behind it with frost and stuff like that. You have to kind off… I’m giving away a lot of secrets here… but you have to lift the top off, Bitzer’s head comes with it, you can mess around with his eyes and eyebrow. You put it back on, change his mouth shape and then it’s all pre-registered with magnets, so it all goes back to exactly the same spot, and then it’s hopefully seamless.

JM: It looks seamless. You’re watching Bitzer and going, “Oh my gosh.” His eyes, his mouth, his nose is sticking out. It’s amazing. I’m always amazed by what you and everybody at Aardman is able to do with animation. Another cool moment in this Shaun the Sheep holiday special is when the sheep transform into a snowman. It’s a little earlier on in the story. Who came up with that, and how were you able to make that happen?

SC: That gag was there from the very beginning. That was one of the first images our storyboard artist Andy James… he’s fantastic… he drew this snowman. All the sheep’s faces were poking out and sneaking along, and it was such a great image. And we thought, “Of course. Balls of fluff like this all stacked up to make a snowman: we gotta make it happen.” And again, the modelmaking team brought all their armature making skills together and all the different crafts to make it look brilliant.

JM: Watching this will be a dream come true for young kids getting into the holiday spirit and seeing the power of stop-motion animation, and for fans of Shaun the Sheep — the franchise and Aardman, they’re gonna love this. If you had the power, Steve… because we’ve seen Shaun and Timmy in shows and movies and specials… if you had the power to decide where they go next, where would that be?

SC: We’ve talked about this. We’ve said: there’s such an appetite for Shaun out there in the future, we could literally do anything. I’d like to do more films because the features are really, really popular. But then having said that, this half an hour is such a great format. It’s a lovely length. You get so much story and like you said earlier, very kindly, it feels like a feature film because it’s packed full of really good stuff. So he could go anywhere in terms of story. We’ve probably got infinite ideas of where he could go next.