More Wallace and Gromit

Nick Park:

Nick Park was born on December 5, 1958.  He always had a passion for cartooning and made his first stop-motion short when he was 13 called the Rat and the Bean Stock.  In graduate school he began creating the first Wallace and Gromit short, A Grand Day Out.  In this short, Wallace and Gromit commit to building a rocket ship because they want to go to the moon to get some of their favorite food, cheese!  His test footage that he created at the university can be seen in this short as Wallace walks down to his basement and sits at his drawing desk to sketch up some rocket designs.  It is interesting to see the way the character progressed from the tests to the actual film.  He was much simpler in the test.  He also had a much smaller forehead (!).  I think that he may have enlarged the forehead for his later films because it made it easier to show emotion for it gave him the ability to exaggerate certain expressions.  Wallace’s appearance, in animation terms, matures drastically in the next two short films.  There is more clarity in his movements and emotions, as well as in Gromit’s.

A Grand Day Out:

A Grand Day Out chronicles Wallace and Gromit’s adventure to the moon in search of cheese.  They want to go on vacation and Wallace decides that the moon is the place to go.  They work together to build a spaceship in their garage and set its course to the moon.  When they land on the moon they prepare a picnic and try to play with a beach ball which quickly floats away because of there being no gravity.  Then they happen upon a moon robot.  Wallace puts a coin in the slot on the robot, but nothing happens.  Disgruntled they walk away, but the robot comes to life and goes over to their rocket ship.  There he finds a ski travel book and he wants to go skiing.  After a few mishaps with the robot, they eventually get back on their ship to go back to earth, leaving the robot skiing on the mountains of cheese on the moon. 

Aardman Animations:
Wallace and Gromit was produced by Aardman Animations, which was started in 1976 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton.  Like most animation studios they dreamed of making feature films, but had to begin with commercials and short tv spots.  Aardman received its first Oscar for Park’s short Creature Comforts.  After they supported Park in his Wallace and Gromit series, two out of three which also won academy awards (The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave).