Wallace and Gromit

As a kid I loved the Wallace and Gromit animated movies and am still amazed with the amount of time and effort that it takes to create films like these. Although his behind the scenes isn't incredibly specific it still gives good insight to how long even a short like this can take, two seconds per day. The attention to detail is incredible and makes stop motion an intimidating platform to approach as someone who has never taken it on before.

The Efforts of Claymation

When was the last time you guys say claymation? Well I gave it a quick youtube search and it produced a whole assortment of videos, from amateur animators to a Wallace and Gromit ad. Like stop motion a lot goes into making a claymation and claymation characters feel and act as if they were real people. There're many different aspects that go into creating a claymation character, like the basic design and the execution of sculpting them. The precise motion that happens within each frame is both time consuming and necessary for the animator to get completely right. Below is both the amateur animation that I found (which is charming and short and kind of funny) as well as the Wallace and Gromit ad that aired sometime in the 2000’s.   For how time consuming claymation is, the efforts really do pay off in the end.

Can't stop Stop-motion

After seeing such a wondrous stop-motion film like Anomalisa a few weeks ago it got me thinking about some of the other stop-motion and claymation films I know and love.  I grew up with Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, all of which are definitely geared towards kids, and even as a young adult I still find so much charm in the style of animation (even though I would never have the patience for it). Some of the stuff I've seen in recent years is absolutely wonderful.  My favorites include Wallace and Gromit's the Wrong Trousers, Community's Christmas special called Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, and Coraline, Corpse Bride, and Nightmare Before Christmas.  (Why is that creepy directors decide to do stop-motion animated pieces?) That thought right there made me want to venture onto the other side (for some unknown reason) and see just how creepy stop-motion can be. One of the films that Mike suggested I see was called The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, something that I can't entirely process even after seeing it.  I'm not sure what to think of it...  But I'll let you form an opinion on it by posting it here, the video upload option wasn't working.


What was intriguing about this film was that it was made by using a combination of model stop motion, and a technique called pixilation, which is essentially animating the human actors frame by frame.  At first when I saw that option I wondered why they didn't just shoot the humans in full video and just drop every x number of frames, but after thinking about it the pixilation technique would allow the humans to appear consistent with the animation style of the models.

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!

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit Video Game

Wallace and Gromit has come such a long way over the years. I remember watching A Grand Day Out as a very young child, in which the duo travels to the moon to sample cheese. Wallace's silliness mixed with Gromit's silence sarcasm makes for the perfect comedic pair. The short films and TV series that included the two characters were created primarily with stop motion. However, things have changed since the 90's when they first came to life.

The Curse of the Were Rabbit came out in 2005, and is the only full length feature of Wallace and Gromit. Shortly after, a video game for both Playstation 2 and Xbox was released, following the plot of the film. My little sister and I were very excited to control the characters rather than just watch them go on adventures. It was also interesting to see them transformed from clay-like figures to 3D animated figures. Above is a clip of the gameplay, complete with Wallace and Gromit themselves, trying to save the neighborhood from an infestation of rabbits.

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!

 

Stop Motion Animation

We have discussed stop motion as one of the many ways to create an animation and I have always loved the medium.  Films like Wallace and Gromit from Aardman Studios or Fantastic Mr. Fox have such a unique and charming aesthetic about them.  In fact, it almost seems to be growing in popularity with films like Coraline and ParaNorman.  Although I have always enjoyed stop motion I never actually attempted to make one of my own.  Over the weekend, I participated in the Stop Motion Animation mini-course (as did Josh) with Prof. Harrington and it was a great deal of fun.  The process of creating models/characters, constructing a set/world for them, and bringing them to life is an awesome experience...though definitely tedious and time consuming.  Below is a stop motion I came across that I particularly enjoyed and also a quick written tutorial with pictures for constructing your own stop-motion models:

Stop-Motion Model Building Tutorial

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.