{"id":467620,"date":"2026-03-10T10:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T10:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467620\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T10:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T10:48:12","slug":"a-12m-tall-wallace-and-gromit-in-london-cracking-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467620\/","title":{"rendered":"A 12m tall Wallace and Gromit in London? Cracking idea!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trace the thumbprints through 50 cracking years of Aardman and the most striking thing is not how things have changed but how so many of its magic ingredients haven\u2019t changed at all. The silent comedy. The absurdist humour. The quintessential Britishness of it all. Sidecars and marrows. Sheepdogs and toasters. The deep joy of hearing Peter Sallis say \u201cgorgonzola\u201d.<\/p>\n

Technology may have transformed the way the animation studio\u2019s stories are brought to the screen, but on that famously tactile clay surface at least it all looks and feels exactly the same as it did when Morph \u2014 one of Aardman\u2019s early creations \u2014 first slipped out of a wooden pencil box on Tony Hart\u2019s TV art show for children half a century ago. <\/p>\n

Now the story of the Oscar-winning studio will be told from new and unusual angles at Lightroom in King\u2019s Cross, London. If you\u2019re unfamiliar with Lightroom, imagine being inside a giant cube where every surface is a cinema screen. Previous shows have focused on David Hockney, and currently there are events on the moon landings and the prehistoric world of the dinosaurs. David Bowie\u2019s performances will be transformed into an immersive spectacle there this spring. <\/p>\n

\"IllustrationShaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is Aardman\u2019s ninth feature filmSky UK<\/p>\n

The Aardman show opens in October so it\u2019s still a work in progress but expect to see Wallace at 12m tall, Gromit appearing on the ceiling and Feathers McGraw riding a toy train, 360 degrees around the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope people will feel inspired and lit up by it,\u201d says Nick Park, the Oscar-winning creator of Wallace and Gromit. The project will combine archive material with new animation and a behind-the-scenes peek into the Bristol studio. Watching it, Park hopes, will be like surveying \u201cgiant frescoes\u201d. \u201cYou can get a big picture but you can also watch the minutiae of the detail if you like.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Lightroom show is one of three major events celebrating Aardman\u2019s big 5-0 this year. Its ninth feature film \u2014 Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom \u2014 is released in autumn while a new interactive exhibition at the Young V&A in east London invites visitors to make their own stop-motion films (my three kids, aged 6-11, had to be dragged from their director\u2019s chairs at closing time and were begging to go back the next day. It\u2019s brilliant).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThe Young V&A\u2019s Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends exhibition David Parry<\/p>\n

Yet strangely for the world\u2019s highest-grossing stop-motion film studio (its theatrical releases have generated about \u00a3600 million so far), there are curiously few imitators. Why, I ask cofounder Peter Lord,\u00a0are there so few copycats?<\/p>\n

\u201cGood question,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t know. There\u2019s not much secret about what we do. Anyone can see that\u2019s Plasticine, those eyes are beads. It\u2019s not hidden. I am surprised that most people don\u2019t just simply rip us off.\u201d <\/p>\n

Before its hat-trick of Oscars for best animated short (for Creature Comforts in 1991), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995); long before its first feature film Chicken Run (2000) broke records to become the highest-grossing stop-motion film; and even longer before The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) beat Studio Ghibli\u2019s Howl\u2019s Moving Castle and Tim Burton\u2019s Corpse Bride to win the best animated feature Oscar in 2006, Aardman\u2019s story began with two 12-year-old boys \u201cmessing about\u201d with Plasticine on a kitchen table in 1960s Surrey.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationCreature Comforts won the Oscar for best animated short in 1991Aardman<\/p>\n

When Peter Lord arrived at a new grammar school in Woking, he took the spare seat next to David Sproxton. The pair started making short films and Plasticine was the easiest way to do it. As Lord recalls, \u201cIf we had known how to make a proper animation puppet, with a skeleton, then we would have done that. But failing that knowledge, we made the simplest possible puppet, which is just solid Plasticine.\u201d<\/p>\n

They caught the animation bug.\u00a0\u201cEven though what we did was absolutely primitive and kind of meaningless \u2014 it was just stuff moving \u2014 animation is a powerful thing. You make a world, you populate it, you bring it to life. In a small, domestic way,\u201d Lord says, laughing, \u201cyou thought you were God.\u201d<\/p>\n

They had found a way to make films without the faff. \u201cYou can do it on your own,\u201d Sproxton says. \u201cYou don\u2019t need actors. It\u2019s very controllable. It\u2019s your thoughts, your ideas \u2014 and they\u2019re not dependent on the weather.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first inkling they were on to something came at school when a \u201cstern biology teacher\u201d caught a glimpse of a five-minute film they had made for an after-school film club. \u201cHe walked off giggling. And I thought, we\u2019ve made\u00a0him\u00a0laugh. That\u2019s got to be good,\u201d Sproxton says. They are now both 72.<\/p>\n

Nick Park joined the studio in 1985, having grown up in Preston obsessed with the Beano comic. He too was about 12 years old when he began experimenting with the \u201canimation button\u201d on his dad\u2019s camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cWallace and Gromit didn\u2019t come overnight,\u201d says the animator, 67. \u201cA germ of an idea started. Art school, then film school allowed me time to develop it, then Pete and Dave gave me a corner of the [Aardman] studio to work in for about four years to finish it [while] working part time. So I had a lot of help.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"IllustrationA scene from Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, 1993Alamy<\/p>\n

As computer-generated graphics changed cinema the trio stuck stubbornly to stop-motion. \u201cWhen Toy Story came out,\u201d Park says, \u201cwe were thinking, oh no, how long have we got?\u201d However, it\u2019s a fallacy that Aardman resisted technology. For every lentil used as a rocket rivet and clingfilm used as water, their ever-expanding team was also using digital editing systems \u201cwith names like Flame and Inferno\u201d. Sproxton sings the praises of Dragonframe, the same industry-standard software used by Wes Anderson to make Isle of Dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlowly technology came along to help us,\u201d Park says. \u201cWe used it to do anything that we couldn\u2019t do with clay, basically. But it was an instinctive thing.\u201d Now he worries \u201cthere\u2019s a danger animators rely too much on that technology and don\u2019t rely on instincts as much\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationGromit and Wallace with with their robot knome, Norbot, in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most FowlNetflix via AP<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence seems to symbolise everything Aardman is not. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a stick in the mud,\u201d Park says with a sigh. \u201cObviously I can understand why people would want to try and experiment [with it], but at the moment it\u2019s too easy to create rubbish\u2026 there\u2019s a veil of blandness that seems to cover everything. And that\u2019s where the artist comes in to make it something more individual and more unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI gives \u201cthe illusion of creativity\u201d, he says. \u201cThat\u2019s the danger of it. Taking what animators and artists have spent years painstakingly creating with blood, sweat and tears\u2026 I can just press a button and say, \u2018I\u2019ll have that. I\u2019ll use it and then, oh, I\u2019m an artist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lord is no less troubled about AI\u2019s impact. \u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be dramatic. The best thing for us to do is experiment. To be clear, I don\u2019t mean that the next Wallace and Gromit movie will be AI. Don\u2019t worry on that score.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aardman\u2019s partnership with DreamWorks, the Hollywood studio founded by Steven Spielberg, ended in 2007 after its computer-generated film Flushed Away disappointed at the box office. However, the break-up was caused more by cultural differences than aesthetic ones. \u201cWe realised that what we do is very British, very European,\u201d Lord says. \u201cIt was almost said to us, \u2018We can keep on working together, but you need to make films which are more designed for the American audience.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said, no thanks. Because there\u2019s a billion American films and very few British ones, especially in mainstream family entertainment. So we\u2019re very proud to occupy that ground. I have great respect for American culture. But we do something different. Our way of telling a story and telling a joke is different to theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Craft is important, but comedy even more so, Lord says, adding one more thing that has worked in the studio\u2019s favour: resisting the temptation to go dark. In the world of animated films, \u201cthere\u2019s lots of creepy, moderately scary stuff, like Tim Burton\u2019s world, like The Corpse Bride. Of course that\u2019s fine. But when we think of a new project, it being funny is very important to us. We have this simple instinct to make people laugh. To charm them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RichardRichard Beek, Nick Park, and Merlin Crossingham at the Oscars last yearSavion Washington\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Aardman became employee-owned in 2018 when Lord and Sproxton sold 75 per cent of their shares to a trust set up to hold shares for the benefit of employees. They felt this \u201cJohn Lewis model\u201d would be the best way to keep the studio independent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realised at some stage we\u2019d either retire or die,\u201d Lord says cheerfully. \u201cIt was quite a conservative, defensive move in a way too, but for a noble end, which is to keep the company independent above all. We felt we had somehow created something very, very wonderful. I didn\u2019t want it just sold.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as that audience is there, we\u2019ll still be making stuff for it,\u201d Sproxton says. And happily, Park has decades\u2019 worth of sketchbooks for inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI often go back to early sketches and early ideas that I once jotted down. So there\u2019s quite a good store of them. And I can\u2019t stop having new ideas.\u201d
Larger Than Life: Starring Wallace & Gromit, Shaun and More is at Lightroom, London N1, from Oct 14, lightroom.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trace the thumbprints through 50 cracking years of Aardman and the most striking thing is not how things…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-467620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}