'Wallace and Gromit,' 90% Alone
animationobsessive.substack.com
animationobsessive.substack.com
There's no way I'd imagined it wasn't done in a professional setup by a full team.
A real standout part is how he commuted by bus to the studio for years, to work on it mostly alone. Truly amazing dedication to a passion project.
I haven't watched it in probably 25 years but I'll find it now and appreciate it all the more for knowing this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7qKKQrSBY&t=581s
"The Wrong Trousers" also has one of the best heist scenes in cinema imo, up there with Rififi. It gets overshadowed by the action sequence though.
The W&G train scene is a chase sequence. It has derring-do, thrills and spills. One moment the baddy is ahead, the next moment the goodies are ahead... high-octane stuff. The WtP cartoon doesn't have any of that, it's a sedate cartoon for kiddies. Tigger standing next to the train and carefully placing train tracks before the train gets there is nothing like Gromit sitting on the train and having to franticly lay track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5l_fGY-EfA&list=PL65tAzyNzM...
... and then the episode becomes a parody of Westerns as it switches to the "imagination vision" of the characters, and the story and gags are not really comparable to The Wrong Trousers at all after that.
I mean, I watched taped episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh religiously as a small child and has strong nostalgia goggles for it, and even I don't think that it is on the same level. Even childhood me would have agreed: I remember loving and enjoying this episode (just like all the others), but the first time I watched The Wrong Trousers as a child I was genuinely laughing so much I had sore core muscles the day after, because I had never seen a film that funny and amazing before in my life.
- you see gromit glance up, his eyebrows communicate that he's seen something challenging
- shot of table approaching, an impossible forest of wooden legs
- shot from the side of gromit (impossibly) finding a winding path under the table, brows furrowed but determined
- shot of wallace at the back of the train, from the side, following the same path
- shot from under the table, facing forwards, seeing our heroes continue into the room
That just one four-second segment of the chase. Its an absolute masterclass of editing and camera angles. And its also impossible, but it makes sense to the viewer.
Also, consider that of the three characters in the chase, only one can talk. Gromit expresses everything with his eyes and body language. And the penguin has barely any facial expression at all, just two black eyes. Mostly the penguin's emotions are expressed through neck movements. But nonetheless he's a classic antagonist.
When "The Wrong Trousers" got to the part where Gromit was frantically laying tracks for the train, the entire audience was laughing and clapping, including me. :-)
As great as the post-A Close shave features are, something was definitely lost when they started adding more characters and expanded the universe.
but it made me miss my dad a lot and i'd cry the whole time. we had it on vhs and there were like 4 or 5 of them, so i'd watch them over and over. i was like 3 or 4 or something.
its weird to say but even as an adult i cannot make it through more than 10-15 min of the movie.
https://www.ft.com/content/10922a92-00f2-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c...
> His mother was a dressmaker (“She still is really. She’s a spry 88”) and his father was a photographer. He was also — didn’t I read somewhere? — an amateur inventor. “ ‘Inventor’ might be too strong a word,” Park says. “He was always in the shed. ‘Oh, I’ll make a shelf’. ‘Oh, I need a stool, I’ll go and make one.’ ”
> Park’s father sounds like the inspiration for his own most famous inventor character. Yet the director didn’t realise the dad-and-Wallace connection until after making his first film featuring the suburban boffin and weird dog. That was A Grand Day Out (1989), his graduate movie project for the National Film and Television School.
> “He loved being compared to Wallace. I hadn’t realised the similarity till that film. It was after Wallace had built the rocket to the Moon in his living room that I thought, ‘I’ve made a film about my dad!’ ”
I can believe Wallace's gestures (and mouth movements) are Park himself, as that's likely the only reference material he had to hand.
"Oh, it's you!" is also one of my favourite gags not only because Wallace is surprised but because everyone else also is. In a short silly message it was able to communicate the intent Feathers Graw has and to put the viewers in it
I saw a poster for a new Shaun the Sheep movie recently, so they're still making them! And it looks like they're still doing it "properly", old school stop motion? That's fantastic.
Grand Day Out is a fantastic watch, the animation, characters and story telling are so fun for really anyone of any age.
> I think it’s because I’d been brought up on a diet of children’s 3D animation.
What is 3d animation referring to here? This guy grew up in the 60's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyNJ03l82sw
If you're an Aimee Mann fan, you might enjoy this Moral Orel mashup:
He also mentions Morph who was Aardman's existing claymation character:
Early experiments with live animation shows unfortunately were discontinued entirely, after encountering grievous injuries and labor complaints from the animator artists.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701245/characters/nm0534134/?i...
This is way, way beyond the usual vertical drama AI slop. It's a project that raises the question of whether the whole Disney studio system is obsolete.
Very relatable experience.