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Making Of - National Trust and Wallace and Gromit

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Making Of - National Trust and Wallace and Gromit

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✨ The Making Of ✨ | National Trust x Wallace & Gromit

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As soon as I started filming A Grand Day Out, the first Wallace and Gromit animation, I realised I was making a film about my dad. He loved tinkering about in the shed. He didn't look like Wallace, but somehow I could see him in his eyes - although my dad's eyes didn't meet in the middle, of course.

As soon as I started filming A Grand Day Out, the first Wallace and Gromit animation, I realised I was making a film about my dad. He loved tinkering about in the shed. He didn't look like Wallace, but somehow I could see him in his eyes - although my dad's eyes didn't meet in the middle, of course.

It was 1982 and, back then, Wallace had no eyebrows, hardly any cheeks and a moustache. And Gromit was embarrassing: he had a nose like a banana, or a cross between a banana and a pear. When Peter Sallis, who voices Wallace, said " No cheeeese, Gromit" for the first time, I realised how wide and toothy I was going to have to make Wallace's mouth.

I got the word gromit off my brother, who was an electrician. A grommet is a rubber thing used to insulate wiring. I liked it so adopted it. And at one point, Wallace was called Gerry, but I really liked how Wallace sounded with Gromit. He was actually a cat in my earliest sketches! But it's easier to make a dog with clay: you can roll it into larger sausages. He was going to have a mouth and do a lot of growling, but I soon saw how hard that was, so I started tweaking his eyebrows instead - and that did everything. With clay, you can create character out of tiny nuances. Gromit was born out of clay, really. If he'd been designed by computer, I'd never have arrived at him. One country, I think it was Finland, dubbed him. They actually gave him a voice - like he was lacking one!

Wallace only loves cheese because I wasn't au fait with scriptwriting as a student. I just started off with a guy building a rocket in his basement. Then I thought he needs someone to talk to and a reason to go to the moon - and the only thing I could come up with was him believing it's made of cheese. The first script would've made a four-hour film. At one point, there was a moon McDonald's that served banana milkshakes. It was going to be like that Star Wars scene with all the aliens in the bar. When Aardman took me on, their first advice was how to cut something down so that it's makeable in four years. A Grand Day Out took me seven in total.

I had a number of ideas kicking around for The Wrong Trousers, which followed in 1993. One was this pair of techno trousers that allowed Wallace to walk up walls; another was the penguin lodger, Feathers McGraw. Peter Lord, Aardman's founder, said to me: "What if he was a villain?" And it suddenly became a Hitchcock thriller, with a bit of " Put a rubber glove on your head and you're a chicken" humour, too.

The train chase is something I'd never seen done before in stopframe animation. None of us knew how to do it - or even if it could work. In Tom and Jerry chases, you used to get the background whizzing by and repeating itself, so we tried the same. We built a 20ft long living room wall, 2ft high, and fixed the camera to the train, and filmed on a long shutter speed so the background looked blurry. It was quite a feat.

The Wrong Trousers had two or three animators, and we'd be off setting up another set while one was being shot. Later, on our bigger feature films, we'd shoot over 18 months, with 25 to 30 animators and a crew of up to 300 shooting on 25 sets at once. As director, I like to act each scene through first, so I can check the looks, speed or impact I'm after.

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.

Some things lend themselves to spinoffs. We've often been asked where Feathers McGraw is now and if he ever got out of jail. We've also thought about Wallace and Gromit's backstory. I imagine they were both babies at the same time - a baby and a puppy - so we've been exploring that. A prequel isn't what's next for them, though.

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.

Peter Lord, Aardman co-founder

Nick was the only other person in the world, as far as we know, who was working in Plasticine. He was the obvious guy for us to take on at Aardman - even before we saw what he was doing. He was still at the National Film and Television School when we first met. When he showed us Wallace delivering a line of dialogue - " We've forgotten the crackers!" - we laughed out loud. That's extremely rare and it's not even a joke. But the sight of him was so funny. We knew he had a good thing going.

I've sometimes had to put my foot down - usually over length and overelaboration. If I hadn't, A Close Shave would have been 50 minutes long, rather than 30, and that's an awkward length. In fact, A Close Shave contains the best scene we ever had to cut. Its love story, between Wallace and Wendolene, was based on Brief Encounter and that very English embarrassment about expressing your feelings. At one point, there was a big love scene set in Crewe railway station. It's always painful but sometimes you have to throw away ideas.

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's so good at invention. He takes a simple idea and adds all these surprises. I watched A Close Shave the other day and I'd forgotten how funny the big showdown in the mill is, with all the sheep about to get turned into dogfood. There they are in the middle of this terrible scene with this monster robot dog, this people-crushing machine, and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep are doing their best. Then good old Wallace tries to help, but presses the button that almost tips him and all the sheep straight into the dogfood machine.

Not helping - that's Wallace's great trait. Right from the start, we could see how memorable the two of them could be.

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As soon as I started filming A Grand Day Out, the first Wallace and Gromit animation, I realised I was making a film about my dad. He loved tinkering about in the shed. He didn't look like Wallace, but somehow I could see him in his eyes - although my dad's eyes didn't meet in the middle, of course.

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What Is Stop Motion Animation and How Does It Work?

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What Is Stop Motion Animation and How Does It Work?

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What Is Stop Motion Animation and How Does It Work? | Mashable Explains

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Falling Slowly - Once The Musical (Phoenix Theatre London)

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Phantom of the Opera - Sierra Boggess & Ramin Karimloo (Classic BRIT Awards 2012)

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French artist turns chicken for three-week egg hatching

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French artist turns chicken for three-week egg hatching

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French artist Abraham Poincheval - who has already spent two weeks living inside a stuffed bear - plans to commune with the humble chicken for his latest performance stunt.

How? By incubating 10 eggs with his own body heat.

He will live inside a glass vivarium until his charges hatch, watched by visitors to the Palais de Tokyo museum in Paris.

Poincheval expects the process to last between 21 and 26 days.

"I will, broadly speaking, become a chicken," he said.

The artist, 44, began the performance - titled "Oeuf" (Egg) - on Wednesday.

Rather than sitting on the eggs directly, he is deploying a chair with a container under its seat.

Poincheval will be wrapped in an insulating blanket designed by Korean artist Seglui Lee, to keep his body temperature high.

He also plans to eat "heating" foods like ginger to generate more body warmth - and will have provisions in easy reach.

Lavatorial matters are not so simple. Poincheval will use a box beneath him when nature calls, and will not be able to get up to relieve himself.

To hatch the eggs successfully, he will only be able to stand and leave them for 30 minutes a day. That time will be used for meals.

The egg enterprise comes less than a month after Poincheval's last effort "Pierre" (Stone), where he lived inside a hollowed-out limestone rock shaped to fit his body.

The Palais de Tokyo said the artist was "trying to escape from human time and experience mineral speed".

Prior to that, he spent a fortnight in April 2014 living inside a hollowed-out bear in Paris's Museum of Hunting and Nature, eating worms and beetles to mirror the animal's diet.

According to Poincheval, the best way to understand objects is not from a distance, but by entering them.

The fate of the unborn chickens should - appropriately - be clear after Easter.

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French artist turns chicken for three-week egg hatching - BBC News

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French artist Abraham Poincheval - who has already spent two weeks living inside a stuffed bear - plans to commune with the humble chicken for his latest performance stunt. How? By incubating 10 eggs with his own body heat. He will live inside a glass vivarium until his charges hatch, watched by visitors to the Palais de Tokyo museum in Paris.

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Pair of glasses left on US gallery floor mistaken for art

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Pair of glasses left on US gallery floor mistaken for art

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The feeling of slight dissatisfaction that can come with visiting a modern art gallery is a universal one, best articulated as "I could have done that".

A pair of US teenagers have beaten artists at their own game, pulling off a successful prank at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art earlier this week.

While Kevin Nguyen, 16, and TJ Khayatan, 17, were impressed with much of the art on display on their visit on Saturday, they questioned the artistic merits of some exhibits.

Could they do better?

Khayatan put Nguyen's glasses on the floor below an official-looking piece of paper to see how it would be received by gallery-goers.

The work seemed to hit a chord with the public, striking in its simplicity, yet - probably - a challenging commentary on the limits of individual perception.

Khayatan told BuzzFeed News that people gathered around the exhibit to view it and take photographs. He, in turn, took photographs of them admiring his work and later posted them to Twitter, where they went viral.

Nguyen shared images, too, noting the awkwardness of having to retrieve his glasses before they moved on in the museum.

@TJCruda the embarrassing part about it was walking back to pick it up and act like nothing happened
- galaxy (@k_vinnnn) May 24, 2016

The gallery's verified Twitter account drew its own parallels to other artists' work.

Twitter uses were keen to give their own interpretation - within the limitations of the 140-character limit.

Nguyen told Guardian Australia he and Khayatan were surprised by the reception.

"We thought it would only get maybe at most a couple hundred retweets, but hey, I have a pair of famous glasses on my face every day now!"

The "social experiment" immortalised in a Twitter moment - a commemoration of art in the digital age, you might say.

Nguyen said he had no intention of selling his now internet-famous eyewear - but he had an alternative idea.

"My glasses are Burberry, so a sponsorship would be nice," he joked.

Asked how he interpreted the "art piece", he suggested "the deeper meaning" could be about perception: "Anything in life can be art as long as you provide the insight and help people see what you see."

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Pair of glasses left on US gallery floor mistaken for art

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The feeling of slight dissatisfaction that can come with visiting a modern art gallery is a universal one, best articulated as "I could have done that". A pair of US teenagers have beaten artists at their own game, pulling off a successful prank at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art earlier this week.

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Steamy artwork prompts fire panic at Nottingham Contemporary

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Steamy artwork prompts fire panic at Nottingham Contemporary

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An art installation that pumps clouds of steam from a gallery's roof has led to people calling 999 to report the building is on fire.

Thinking Head, by Italian artist Lara Favaretto, has caused confusion during test runs at Nottingham Contemporary ahead of its opening this weekend.

The venue said it had put posters up around the area reassuring people the cloud was not the result of fire.

But the fire service said it was still getting calls from concerned people.

During the installation's run, water vapour is being released from the gallery roof in varying amounts to reflect "the intensity of the thinking happening inside".

At its most intense, the steam sinks to the ground, enveloping a road running past the venue.

Sam Thorne, director of Nottingham Contemporary, said: "It's not a worry at all because it's harmless water vapour.

"We've been working very closely with all of our neighbours, the city council, the fire service too.

"We've been putting lots of adverts out so I think everybody understands this is about producing a cloud of harmless water vapour that's really signifying all the ideas happening in the building.

"It's a public artwork and public artworks are always unpredictable."

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service said it had received "numerous calls" from worried passers-by and was talking to the gallery every day to ensure all is well.

It added all callers reporting smoke in the area were "rigorously questioned" to rule out a real fire.

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Steamy artwork prompts fire panic at Nottingham Contemporary - BBC News

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An art installation that pumps clouds of steam from a gallery's roof has led to people calling 999 to report the building is on fire. Thinking Head, by Italian artist Lara Favaretto, has caused confusion during test runs at Nottingham Contemporary ahead of its opening this weekend.

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Banksy sells original works worth a fortune for £38 each in New York booth

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Banksy sells original works worth a fortune for £38 each in New York booth

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British street artist Banksy is no stranger to being in demand with just one of his pieces fetching up to hundreds of thousands of pounds. But it was a different story for the artist, currently in New York on a residency, when he set up a pop-up booth in Central Park on Saturday.

British street artist Banksy is no stranger to being in demand with just one of his pieces fetching up to hundreds of thousands of pounds. But it was a different story for the artist, currently in New York on a residency, when he set up a pop-up booth in Central Park on Saturday.

Writing on his website he said: "Yesterday I set up a stall in the park selling 100% authentic original signed Banksy canvases. For $60 [£38] each."

Accompanying these brief words, the elusive artist also released a two-and-a-half minute video showing an elderly man selling what appears to be imitations of his work from a market stall but are in fact genuine Banksy canvases. While the day's takings were only $420 (£263), the valuation of the small to medium-sized canvases that were sold is estimated to be in the region of £140,000.

It's the latest publicity stunt from Banksy, who likes nothing more than stirring up the art world. His 'live' exhibition entitled Better Out Than In: An Artist Residency on the Streets of New York has him creating a new piece of work every day. So far Banksy has produced more than a dozen art pieces and 'events' in New York, including a cattle truck full of shrieking soft toys that was driven around the city.

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Banksy sells original works worth a fortune for £38 each in New York booth

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British street artist Banksy is no stranger to being in demand with just one of his pieces fetching up to hundreds of thousands of pounds. But it was a different story for the artist, currently in New York on a residency, when he set up a pop-up booth in Central Park on Saturday.

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Someone left a pineapple at an art show and it got mistaken for art

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Someone left a pineapple at an art show and it got mistaken for art

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A student from Aberdeen has done Tracey Emin and the like no favours by leaving a pineapple at an art exhibition as a prank before later discovering it had been mistaken for art.
Ruairi Gray, 22, had bought the pineapple as a 'joke' but discovered the next day that it had been put on show in a glass display case in the centre of the exhibition at Robert Gordon University.

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The prank worked so flawlessly that the piece of fruit was apparently on display for six days before it was taken down with the rest of the exhibition.

Ruairi, who is originally from Edinburgh, told metro.co.uk that he had bought the pineapple to tease a friend but was stuck with it after the joke fell on deaf ears.

'We were stuck with this pineapple, we didn't know what to do with it, until we saw this empty art display. Our goal was to see how long it would remain there before being removed,' he said.

After placing the pineapple on the empty display stand on a Thursday, the fourth year business and information technology student returned four days later to find it had been put in a glass display box.

'We were shocked and in disbelief. We didn't stop laughing for about 10 minutes,' he continued.

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'It lasted there until Wednesday evening, until the rest of the display was taken away and it was the last thing left.'

He explained his tutor had been at the exhibition and asked an art lecturer whether the piece was real.

Ruairi said the lecturer replied: 'Of course it's real, you can see what they were trying to do with the top of the pineapple and the glass.'

The art exhibition called Look Again challenged visitors to 'look at the places and spaces around us through fresh eyes'.

Sally Reaper, Look Again Festival Director said: 'It's a bit of a mystery - we really have got no idea who did it. It was very clear to us it was a prank but we have decided to leave it there because it's in keeping with the playful spirit of our festival.

'The 2017 festival has been really successful - we had more than 30,000 attendees and we're already looking forward to next year.'

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Someone left a pineapple at an art show and it got mistaken for art

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A student from Aberdeen has done Tracey Emin and the like no favours by leaving a pineapple at an art exhibition as a prank before later discovering it had been mistaken for art.