Creating Wallace and Gromit

Nick Park started creating Wallace and Gromit in 1982. The first film was A Grand Day Out.

He came up with the name Gromit from his brother, an electrician. A grommet is a rubber device used to insulate wiring. He was originally going to be a cat, but once he found it was a lot easier to make dogs out of clay, Gromit became a dog.

Park had never written a script before, and his first version of A Grand Day Out would have been four hours long. Aardman took Park on and helped him cut down his ideas to make them better and makeable in a shorter amount of time. A Grand Day Out took seven years in total.

The next film, The Wrong Trousers, came out in 1993. The train chase in the film is something that they had never seen done before in stopframe animation, and none of them knew how to do it. They built a 20 ft long living room wall, 2 ft high. They fixed the camera to the train and filmed on a long shutter speed to make the background blurry.

In an interview with The Guardian, Park talks about once they made The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Dreamworks: "We made The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Dreamworks, and it was often a struggle to keep things as we wanted. They'd say: "Why do they have to have an Austin A35? Can't they have a pickup truck or something cool?" But I love it because it's not cool. We were going to call it The Great Vegetable Plot, but research showed that vegetables were a negative with American kids, and they didn't know a plot is a place where you plant vegetables."

Co-founder of Aardman, Peter Lord, says, "Nick manages to convey in animation what Wallace and Gromit are thinking – and that's something most animators can't do. The lack of sentiment is the most charming thing about them: their affection is never saccharine, never obvious, just kind of real. I love their Jeeves and Wooster thing: the master being such a dope and failing to properly value his lower-status companion – I won't say servant – who is so much more intelligent."

Nick Park ends his interview by saying, "Digital animation is getting better all the time – they can make it look so much like clay now – but for me, there will always be a difference."

Stop-Motion Animation

When someone mentions animation, the first ideas that come to mind are works by famous companies such as Pixar and DreamWorks. Movies like How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek, and Finding Nemo have illustrated the power of graphical animation by developing complicated and concise fictional worlds. But, animation doesn't just stop with cartoon movies. Stop-Motion Animation provides an alternative approach to animation that utilizes all forms of media to create a polished project: still images, sound, video, clay figures (actors), set modeling, and the story-boarding process. One of my favorite stop-motion films, as a child, was Aardman Animations' Wallace and Gromit. Not only did the British stop-motion comedy consist of four short films, but it also included one feature-length film. The academy-nominated relationship, of the two main characters, grows over the course of the series as Wallace's new ideas are constantly met with Gromit's "unimpressed" body language and humorous facial expressions.

                 

This stop-motion graphics artist (below) decided to take the "Wallace and Gromit approach" a step further. With the recent release of Warner Brothers' The Lego Movie, YouTube user, "cheesybricks," takes a stab at his own version of stop-motion animation with the Lego theme in mind. In this short video, watch as the artist "paints with lego."

                     Video Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxy1fkrXmCI#t=85

This video really opened my mind to the possibilities that one can achieve in animation as a field of study. Perhaps, it will be something that I will pursue in the future. But for now, I'm just going to enjoy its prestige!

Using Science in Art

"Professor Fletcher's invention of the CellScope, which is a Nokia device with a microscope attachment, was the inspiration for a teeny-tiny film created by Sumo Science at Aardman. It stars a 9mm girl called Dot as she struggles through a microscopic world. All the minuscule detail was shot using CellScope technology and a Nokia N8, with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics."


This technology can be used for Medical Doctor's everywhere, but also gives a new opportunity for art. The Cellscope technology can take almost any smartphone and turn it into a portable high powered microscope. Super cool stuff!

Shaun the Sheep

Wallace and Gromit started as a short film series featuring the claymation figures of Wallace (left) and Gromit (right) This eventually led to the release of "Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-rabbit", a feature film released in 2005. A unique style of motion-graphics, "Wallace and Gromit" is one of the most famous claymation series ever made. It's brilliance was brought to us by Nick Park and Aardman Studios.

In one of the Wallace and Gromit short films, "A Close Shave", there's a fantastic sequence where Wallace and Gromit save a herd of stolen sheep. Check it out:

I just found out that the main sheep from this episode, "Shaun", has gotten his very own series called "Shaun the Sheep", also created by Nick Park. Each clip is only about a minute long but they've created several dozens of them and it's also a TV show that plays internationally. The generally light material is usually meant for kids, but I think older people can enjoy it just as much. 

Anyone familiar with the Wallace and Gromit series should love this spin-off. It's all the same stuff... but with more sheep. 

Check out the website here!

 

Laika + ParaNorman

I watched the stop motion feature film "ParaNorman," a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it. The film had a very solid story with likeable and relatable characters. The fllm came out of the production company Laika which is a stop motion studio based in Portland, Oregon. Laika also produced the well received film "Coraline," in 2009. "ParaNorman" had a unique aesthetic, different from stop motion classics coming from the Aardman Studios. I find it refreshing seeing a new stop motion company in the states have some success after Aardman has dominated stop motion features for a while.

When I was a kid...

...I loved Wallace and Gromit! My family owned A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave in a VHS boxed set (I know, pretty shnazzy.) My favorite was A Grand Day Out because I loved the story- the idea of building a rocket ship in your house, traveling to the moon just to get a bit of cheese to go with some crackers, and encountering an old robot that loves to ski.

Wallace and Gromit enjoying cheese and crackers on the moon in A Grand Day Out

For those of you who might not know what the Wallace and Gromit movies are, they are a Claymation series of short films produced by Aardman Animations which is a British animation studio. There are two main characters: Wallace who is an inventor, but a little less than intelligent at times, and Gromit who is Wallace's pet dog. I envy the skills it took to create this because working with clay for animated movies must be one of the most tedious and challenging forms of stop-motion. If you haven't seen Wallace and Gromit before, it's definitely worth watching!

Changes in Claymation

I assume that pretty much everyone grew up with the animations of Wallace and Gromit, but it could just be me. Whether or not this is true however, the style of Aardman animation and claymation has some how found a way into each of our lives, whether it be Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, or Flushed Away. Some of the Aardman group have even worked on animations used for Pee Wee's Playhouse and most famously crossed over with DreamWorks.

Chicken Run

Wallace and Gromit

Flushed Away

I bring Aardman Animation Studios up because they have created a new stop-motion feature called The Pirates! Band of Misfits.

Now, Aardman studios is known for their use of stop-motion clay animation, but they still incorporate CG additions. Flushed Away was Aardman's first completely computer-animated movie, yet the designers maintained the look of the classic stop-motion clay animation. The video below shows the process of stop-motion that Aardman uses for such films like Wallace and Gromit and now The Pirates! Band of Misfits.

In a few different interviews with Peter Lord and Peter Baynham (Director of The Pirates! and the co-writer of Arthur Christmas, another mainly CGI feature), they discuss the plots and animation techniques used to create the two movies. In addition, this article from Online Animation Magazine previews both movies.

I find it very interesting how an animation studio incorporates traditional animation techniques, like stop motion, along with computer generated animation in order to reach their end goal. Using both techniques they can incorporate the best of both animation worlds. Plus, in an age where most all of the younger audience is used to computer animation I find it quite endearing that the directors are making a movie that will attract the older audience nostalgic for stop-motion.