Putting on the Shaun the Sheep show

This week, 70 painted Shaun the Sheep figures will appear across Bristol - hot on the heels of the 50 on show in London this spring. It means the end is in sight for the team behind a two-year project aimed at boosting funds for children's hospitals across the UK.

Installing 120 5ft-tall colourful comical sheep sculptures across Bristol and London is no laughing matter.

There is a lot to consider. They weigh a ton (well, three-quarters of a tonne to be precise). Forklift trucks are involved. And a lot of paperwork.

There are celebrities to deal with - fashion designer Dame Zandra Rhodes and model David Gandy were among the designers.

But then there is what Nicola Masters, director of the charity behind the Shaun in the City trails, describes as "the unglamorous side".

"It is a massive logistical exercise getting everything together," she says.

"Buy-in" is sought from the various councils. The steel-reinforced fibreglass Shauns are mounted on concrete plinths and so some require planning permission.

"We have to be careful that they are flat, not on cobbles, that they don't damage grass or wildflowers -about how we transport them and put them in place," Ms Masters says.

But first the sculptures, made in South Wales, have been shipped back and forth to scores of artists in locations from Dorset to Aberdeen.

Painting them is no joke either. Bristol artist Jenny Urquhart put her "Baa-lloon" Shaun together over several 13-hour days, at the Aardman studios. She lost half a stone in weight in the process. By the time she started work on her second Shaun, "Lambmark Larry" - she had learned a valuable lesson: "To wear kneepads and eat more."

"It's a massive surface area and it's a really awkward shape. Painting things like the underneath and the legs is a killer, particularly when doing really fine detail. You bang your head on his chin and his tail every half hour."

But the Grand Appeal is hoping all the effort pays off, raising millions for cutting edge equipment, arts and educations programmes for patients.

The charity's first trail, Gromit Unleashed, saw 80 sculptures of Aardman's canine hero attracting more than a million visitors to Bristol in 2013. It raised £4.5m overall - mostly through auctioning off the sculptures but also through individual fundraising efforts and merchandising.

The Grand Appeal benefits from its close association with Aardman Animations. The studio's founders, Peter Lord and Dave Sproxton, are on the board of trustees, as is Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park.

Mr Lord designed one of the Bristol sculptures, Beowulf tribute "Baa-wulf": "Most of them have got a terrible pun, that's the essential part of the thing," he noted at a launch event.

The trail is wildly popular with sponsors - there is still a waiting list businesses hoping to get involved.

"I think there's a little bit of magic between Aardman, the Grand Appeal and the Children's Hospital," said Ms Masters.

"Aardman is such a cultural hub for Bristol. We are amazed by some of the artists who work there and are prepared to support the appeal."

The stop-motion studios opened in Bristol in 1976. There Morph and Creature Comforts were born. Shaun's first appearance was a bit-part in the 1995 Wallace and Gromit Film A Close Shave. He got his own TV show in 2007 and has become Aardman's biggest global brand, with fans in more than 170 countries.

No wonder that various tourism bodies have jumped on the Shaun bandwagon - particularly as his film was out this year and 2015 is the year of the sheep, according to the Chinese Zodiac. Lands End, Kew Gardens and VisitEngland's own £4m domestic campaign have featured the mischievous sheep this year.

It is too early to measure the trail's success in London, where it was extended for a week. But in Bristol, the summer-long event is expected to be the city's biggest tourism attraction of the year - surpassing the well-established international Balloon Fiesta, which brings in 500,000 people over four days in August.

Tourism body Destination Bristol estimate that Gromit Unleashed brought more than £100m into Bristol, with many overseas visitors staying in the city and the hope is that more will come this summer.

Among them will be Anniek Andriese, 27, a teacher from Tilburg, in the Netherlands. A lifelong Wallace and Gromit fan, she and her mother have already flown over once for the London trail in April - and are now preparing for their first visit to Bristol - after first dropping in on the Aardman exhibition in Paris.

"I hope my mum and I have enough time to find all the Shauns and also explore the city," she said.

"We had a fantastic time in London ... The Shauns were very nice and beautifully designed. The trails brought us to many places in London where you, as a tourist, would not come to easily."

But the tourist-friendly Bristol trail landed Shaun in the middle of political row about the locations chosen - with a cluster around the city centre and the well-heeled Clifton neighbourhood.

Labour MP for Bristol East Kerry McCarthy, whose constituency includes some of the city's most deprived areas, took to Twitter to demand the charity #ShareTheShauns saying: "Another Bristol thing aimed at tourists, who won't venture beyond centre, rather than kids living in places like BS5".

The criticism stung the charity. Ms Masters said it was "grossly unfair".

"As a charity, it's our responsibility to raise money for Bristol Children's Hospital - it's not our responsibility to distribute public art around the city," she countered.

For her and the eight-strong team at the Grand Appeal the launch of the Bristol trail means nearly two years of planning, negotiating, selecting artists from nearly 2,000 hopefuls and transporting the hefty sheep around the country - away from the prying eyes of camera phones - is nearly done. But not quite.

After eight weeks in Bristol, the sculptures - and their London counterparts - will join up for two big exhibitions in both cities, before coming back to Bristol for the auction in October. Whether any can top the £65,000 fetched for Gromit Lightyear in 2013, remains to be seen.

Is another trail in the pipeline? Ms Masters is staying tight-lipped: "We've been inundated with requests from around the world to create trails, but Bristol is our home, so watch this space."