Shaun the Sheep film marks Aardman's 50th anniversary

Aardman Animations is marking its 50th anniversary with “Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom,” the third full-length film starring Shaun the Sheep, due in UK cinemas on September 18.

The Bristol-based studio, founded in 1976 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, spent about three and a half years working on the Halloween-themed film. In the story, Shaun and his flock try to save Halloween from a creature terrorising the farm's pumpkin patch.

Aardman continues to use stop-motion animation, building puppet-sized sets and photographing small frame-by-frame movements to create motion. The complete film is made up of more than 100,000 stop-motion frames.

Animation director Claire Rolls said the aim was to make audiences believe the puppets were alive. Producer Richard Beek said digital effects were used only as an embellishment to the hand-crafted work and that artificial intelligence was not used for the latest Shaun movie.

Shaun first appeared in 1995 in “Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave” and later became the centre of a television series and two earlier films.