Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. The main film series consists of four short films and one feature-length film, and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and made public in 1989. Wallace was voiced by actor Peter Sallis until 2010 when he was succeeded by Ben Whitehead. While Wallace speaks very often, Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, communicating through facial expressions and body language.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Nicholas Wulstan Park is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave is a 1995 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol and BBC Children's International. It is the third film featuring Wallace and Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993). A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. A Close Shave saw the first appearance of Shaun, who became the main character of the Shaun the Sheep spin-off series.
The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park, featuring his characters Wallace and Gromit, and was produced by Aardman Animations in association with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol, Lionheart Television and BBC Children's International. It is the second film featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989). In the film, a villainous penguin, Feathers McGraw, posing as a lodger, recruits Wallace by using his techno-trousers to steal a diamond from the city museum.
A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit, later marketed as A Grand Day Out, is a 1989 British stop-motion animated short film starring Wallace and Gromit. It was directed, animated and co-written by Nick Park at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield and Aardman Animations in Bristol.
Peter John Sallis was an English actor, known for his work on British television. He was the voice of Wallace in the Academy Award-winning Wallace and Gromit films and played Norman "Cleggy" Clegg in Last of the Summer Wine from its 1973 inception until the final episode in 2010, making him the only actor to appear in all 295 episodes. Additionally, he portrayed Norman Clegg's father in the prequel series First of the Summer Wine.
Morph is a British series of clay stop-motion comedy animations, named after the main character, who is a small terracotta-skinned plasticine man, who speaks an unintelligible language and lives on a tabletop, his bedroom being a small wooden box. The character was initially seen interacting with Tony Hart, beginning in 1977, on several of his British television programmes, notably Take Hart, Hartbeat and SMart.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a 2005 stop-motion animated comedy film directed by Nick Park and Steve Box. It was produced, made and owned by DreamWorks Animation in collaboration with Aardman Animations. It was the second feature-length film by Aardman, after Chicken Run (2000) and the last DreamWorks Animation film distributed by its parent DreamWorks Pictures, as the studio spun off as an independent studio in 2004 until its acquisition by NBCUniversal in 2016. The film debuted in Sydney, Australia on 4 September 2005, before being released in theaters in the United States on 7 October 2005 and in the United Kingdom a week later on 14 October 2005.
Shaun the Sheep is a British stop-motion animated silent comedy children's television series and a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit franchise. The title character is Shaun, a sheep who previously appeared in the 1995 short film A Close Shave and the Shopper 13 short film from the 2002 Wallace and Gromit's Cracking Contraptions series. The series focuses on his adventures on a northern English farm as the leader of his flock.
Timothy Wonnacott is an English chartered auctioneer, chartered surveyor, antiques expert, narrator, and a television presenter. He was previously a director of Sotheby's, one of the world's oldest auction houses.
Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, also known as the Bristol Children's Hospital, is a paediatric hospital in Bristol and the only paediatric major trauma centre in South West England. The hospital is part of the University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW), which includes eight other hospitals. The hospital is located next to the Bristol Royal Infirmary in the city centre.
Burges Salmon LLP is a law firm based in Bristol, England.
Christopher Sadler is a British animator, director and writer. He is primarily known for his work on Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Rex the Runt, Cracking Contraptions, Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep.
David Alexander Riddett BSC is a prominent English cinematographer mostly known for his work at Aardman Animations.
Gromit Unleashed was a public charity art trail led by Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal and Aardman Animations, in which 80 giant artist-decorated fibreglass sculptures of Gromit were displayed on the streets of Bristol and the surrounding area between 1 July and 8 September 2013. At the end of the art trail, the sculptures were auctioned to raise funds for Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity. The Grand Appeal pledged to raise £3.5 million for state-of-the-art equipment for Bristol Children's Hospital, including an intraoperative MRI scanner, family facilities and child-friendly artwork to help save the lives of sick children at the hospital. All funds raised by Gromit Unleashed contributed towards this. The project follows the concept of the "Land in Sicht", the original Swiss project by artistic director Walter Knapp which inspired the subsequent worldwide exhibition "CowParade" and similar exhibitions in other cities, including Wow! Gorillas which took place in Bristol in 2011. To date Gromit Unleashed has raised over £5 million for Bristol Children's Hospital.
Shaun in the City was a public charity arts trail organised by Wallace & Gromit's Children's Foundation and Aardman Animations, in which 120 giant, artist and celebrity-decorated fibreglass sculptures of Shaun the Sheep were displayed in famous locations and green spaces around London and Bristol. The first 50 Shaun sculptures appeared in London from 28 March to 31 May 2015, with a further 70 Shaun sculptures appearing in Bristol from 6 July to 31 August 2015.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
Robin Robin is a 2021 stop-motion animated musical short film produced by Aardman Animations, created and directed by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please, and written by Ojari, Please, and Sam Morrison.
Unicornfest was a public arts trail in Bristol, England to celebrate the 650th anniversary of Bristol. The trail featured 60 giant unicorn sculptures designed by artists, designers and local talent. The unicorns were placed in various locations around Bristol, but some were further afield in Weston-super-Mare, Cheddar Gorge and Chew Valley Lake. Over 40 artists had created 60 unicorns between them.
