Word: gromit
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...likely recognize his past characters upon sight: the despondent zoo captives in his Oscar-winning 1989 short, “Creature Comforts,” the Great Escaping cluckers of “Chicken Run,” and the beloved man-and-best-friend duo Wallace and Gromit...
...established Wallace (voiced by veteran Brit character actor Peter Sallis) as a vague, cheerful bachelor, whose obsession for dreaming up elaborate contraptions almost equals his fondness for cheese. (Wallace's bookshelf, as seen in Were-Rabbit, contains such volumes as East of Edam, Brie Encounter and Fromage to Eternity.) Gromit, his master's fretful servant and savior, is mute. He conveys his always justified anxiety via minute twitches of the most eloquent movie eyebrows since Groucho's. At the climax of each film, Wallace's handyman hubris has put the duo in an awful dilemma that can be resolved only...
...Wallace and Gromit shorts were intimate affairs: the man, the dog and one or two other characters. Were-Rabbit creates a panorama of rural England: dozens of humans with the standard Nick Park facial expression (dazed) and eccentricities (too much mouth and not enough teeth). Aardman's feature films are sponsored by the Hollywood studio DreamWorks, but their tone and humor are totally, defiantly, blitheringly English, in a manner reminiscent of the classic Ealing comedies. Were-Rabbit is admirably old-fashioned in another way: while the rest of the animation world has gone to computer-generated (CG) features...
...rather, thumbmade, since the animators are encouraged to leave their personal imprints, literally, on the characters. "Wallace and Gromit are designed to be animated with your hands and your fingers as much as possible," says Teresa Drilling, an American who joined Aardman for Chicken Run. "They've got just the right sort of nooks for your thumbs, so that gives it a very specific organic feel--thumby but funny...
...their inner child, the boy (or girl) genius who loved to play with clay. And they know they are part of a glorious anachronism, an ancient craft. "I love The Incredibles," Box, a co-director, says of Pixar Animation Studios' CG hit, "but that's like a Ferrari. Wallace & Gromit is a massive antique tractor. We want that thumby, handmade, handcrafted look...