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New Wallace and Gromit Episodes Coming Online

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Jan 16, 2002 08:25 PM
from the porridge-today-gromit dept.
Media Television
chachi5000 noted that CNN is running a story about Aardman releasing Wallace and Gromit Shorts Online. There will be a dozen of the one minute clips featuring the awesome plasticine duo. Also bits about the feature film coming in (sigh) a few years. Anyone who hasn't seen the existing Wallace and Gromit trilogy is missing out.
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  • Good old-fashioned animation, eh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jwlidtnet (453355) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:29PM (#2851968)
    It is nice to know that despite the preponderence of computers in animation today, something that's this "old-school" can still occur (albeit online-only, I guess).

    May clay-mation never die.

    -J
  • Funny, this being right above the article on powered exoskeletons. [slashdot.org] I wonder if they will be remote controlled and able to walk up walls?

    Cracking good cheese, Gromit!

  • A few years? Sooner than that... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bravehamster (44836) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:31PM (#2851976) Homepage Journal

    Ain't it Cool News had a story [aintitcoolnews.com] on this earlier. Looks like the title will be The Great Vegetable Plot and the director is shooting for a release 2 years from now. Here's to hoping it turns out better than Chicken Run, which just rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. *shrug*. I just can't make myself care about the well-being of chickens, which are so darn tasty. ;)

  • One Minute? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Great Wakka (319389) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:31PM (#2851978) Homepage Journal
    How can anyone accomplish anything in one minute? The real episodes were a little squished into their 40 min frame, and one minute is really pushing it.

    But what I really want is Chicken Run 2!
    • Well, obviously they won't be telling whole stories -- they'll be individual gags. To save you the bother of actually reading the story: the idea is that each one is a demonstration (by Gromit) of one of Wallace's inventions.
    • One minute... why you can buy a 20 minute phone call for one min... ah shit.

      wrong thingy.

  • details, details, details (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattdm (1931) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:32PM (#2851984) Homepage
    One thing I love about the Wallace and Gromit shorts is their attention to detail. Every scene has interesting little bits in the background -- stuff going on that you might catch on the fourth or fifth viewing. I'm afraid that in stretching things to a full-length feature, some of this will be lost. Chicken Run, while fun enough, disappointed me for exactly this reason. It was kinda funny, and had some amusing references to other movies -- and certainly they put a lot of work into it -- but it just doesn't have the *depth* that Wallace and Gromit do. I hope Nick Park will prove my fears unfounded.

  • NetNanny and this Article ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by pgrote (68235) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:33PM (#2851997) Homepage
    Read the article and enjoyed. Will be funnier than anything to see the inventions.

    As I read the last part:

    "Park has now expanded the idea to make them into mini-movies where Gromit demonstrates the innovations, which include a high-powered cricket ball bowling gun and a toaster-cum-TV."

    I had an idea. I ran to my daughter's room where her PC is protected by Net Nanny and put the url in. No go :-) You gotta love the protection it provides. :-)
    • I think a lot of it is exposure. In the 6 years I've been over here, I've never yet seen any of the 3 'movies' shown on any channel.

      Americans generally seemed to like/love Chicken Run, I'm sure they'd have loved Wallace and Gromit if they'd have had a chance to see them. As it stands, it seems you have to buy them on VHS/DVD to get to see them, a few maybe took a look after Chicken Run, but probably most didn't.

    • Re:Ever wonder why... (Score:5, Funny)

      by realdpk (116490) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @10:10PM (#2852278) Homepage Journal
      "I mean, humour is humour"

      I think that's the problem right there. In America, humour is humor.

  • My 2-year-old and I rejoice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Euphonious Coward (189818) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:52PM (#2852067)
    The Wallace & Gromit trilogy are the only videos my two-year-old and I can both watch, and both enjoy equally. She'll find new things to like about them year after year.

    How many things made today can you say that about? (Not a rhetorical question: suggestions please!)

  • Cool! (Score:3, Informative)

    by MathJMendl (144298) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:54PM (#2852076) Homepage
    They already have lots of other stuff here [shockwave.com], at AtomFilms, but this is reallly cool! I love Aardman Animations, they are great! Some of my favorites are Creature Comforts (done by Nick Park) and Pib and Pog (two little kids playing around with sulfuric acid, lol, priceless).

  • The Title is a Nationality Test. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ashitaka (27544) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:59PM (#2852087) Homepage
    "The Great Vegetable Plot" :-)

    Would Americans get it? They have vegetable patches and Great Schemes.

  • Nick Park is a genius... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kzinti (9651) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @09:12PM (#2852126) Homepage Journal
    I first saw Grand Day Out in 1990 at an animation festival in Boston. (Along with a Rug Rats short and something bizarre called Deadsy "You can no play with Deadsy unless you have them great big sex-o-thingies".) I'd never seen anything as funny as Wallace and Gromit, and that mechanical thing they ran into on the Moon had me in stitches. Electronics For Dogs, "Gromit! We've forgotten the crackers!", the "parking brake" on the rocket... just thinking about these moments makes me laugh.

    That animation festival also ran Creature Comforts, which isn't as funny, but is its own form of genius: interviews with real people, immigrants from other countries about how they compare London to their home country. Nick Park then made up animations of zoo animals speaking the voices instead of real people. Unique. Unusual. Unforgettable.

    For years after that, I looked for Grand Day Out on video tape, but it wasn't until the success of his later shorts that videos became available. Now there's little in my collection I treasure more.

    Rock on, Nick Park, rock on!

    --Jim

  • Aardman and CGI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by edo-01 (241933) on Wednesday January 16 2002, @09:19PM (#2852145)
    Aardman have produced a couple of CG shorts recently; the first I saw on last year's SIGGRAPH reel featured two posers in a nightclub trying to pick up the same girl, the second is three little plasticene-looking monsters explaining to the camera why they don't have their short film ready in time, and ends with them singing a song dressed as flowers in a desperate attempt to fill time. The later one is VERY hard to tell it's not claymation. They've also used it a fair bit in their TVC work as well as for certain effects in Chicken Run.

    I get where people come from when they decry the use of computers in animation these days - sometime I see the quality of 3D kids shows like Beast Wars or Max Steel and I feel like burning my computer in disgust - but the extreme crappiness of a lot of 3D animation is nothing to do with the tools, just a lack of creativity on the part of the production companies. CGI can be used to create stunning imagery [splutterfish.com] and animations [online.no], it's just a shame that as yet most of the stuff the general public sees on TV is just so bad...
    • ... And then we move his hands, just a tiny amount, just a tiny amount, click-click, two frames, then his eye, just a tiny amount, just a tiny amount.

      (any Fast Show/Brilliant fan will understand :)

    • Re:nausiating (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stefanlasiewski (63134) <[slashdot] [at] [stefanco.com]> on Wednesday January 16 2002, @08:53PM (#2852072) Homepage Journal
      it's not like there's any advantage of making everything out of plastercine!

      Apparently there is some advantage, otherwise Nick Park wouldn't spend so much time working in plastercine.

      I've seen "Wrong Trousers", I've seen "Final Fantasy". Both were created from a different medium (stop animation vs computer graphics). Both movies are great examples of what can be done with the medium.

      But Wrong Trousers had a depth to the animation-- There were things going on in the background... the expression on the characters faces... the Pengiun was evil, and you knew it. My 2 year old Nephew knew it.

      Final Fantasy was a fun and groundbreaking movie, but it lacked detail. Yes, their hair moved realistically, but the characters were cold, their expressions were hard to read, the background scenes were cluttered and hard to make out. The only reason I could tell that there was any attraction between the lead women & lead man was because of the dialogue. If the mute was on, I couldn't tell you *what* was going on. Not so with the Wallace & Gromit movies...

      Comparing those two movies, I would say that there isn't much advantage to using computer animation over plastercine ! (not yet, anyways).

      • Scott McCloud discussed this phenomenon in his book, Understanding Comics.

        Essentially, the more realistic the images, the less likely the viewer can really identify with or feel for the character in precisely the way that the artist wants. Too many distractions, too many subtle cues being converted into too many interpretations.

        Whereas if the characters are rendered more abstractly, using simpler geometry, simpler facial expressions, fewer digressions from the message, then the viewer can empathize or identify with the characters very easily. The less it looks like someone else in particular, the more it could be you.

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