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 actors Peter Sallis and Ben Whitehead. 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.
Claymation or clay animation, sometimes plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay.
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.
The European Film Awards have been presented annually since 1988 by the European Film Academy to recognize excellence in European cinematic achievements. The awards are given in 19 categories, of which the most important is the Best Film. They are restricted to European cinema and European producers, directors and actors. The awards were officially also called the "Felix Awards" until 1997, in reference to the former award's trophy statuette, which was replaced by a feminine statuette.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a 2005 stop-motion animated horror comedy film directed by Nick Park and Steve Box and produced by DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations as the second feature-length film by Aardman, after Chicken Run (2000). It was the last DreamWorks Animation film to be distributed by 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.
Flushed Away is a 2006 animated adventure comedy film directed by Sam Fell and David Bowers, produced by Cecil Kramer, David Sproxton, and Peter Lord, and written by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd, Joe Keenan and Will Davies. It was the third and final DreamWorks Animation film co-produced with Aardman Features following Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and was the first Aardman project mostly made in CGI animation as opposed to starting with their usual stop-motion – this was because using water on plasticine models could damage them, and it was complex to render the effect in another way. The film stars the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Shane Richie, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis and Jean Reno. In the film, a pampered pet rat named Roddy St. James (Jackman) is flushed down the toilet in his Kensington apartment by a sewer rat named Sid (Richie), and befriends a scavenger named Rita Malone (Winslet) in order to get back home while evading a sinister toad (McKellen) and his hench-rats.
Glago's Guest is a 2008 Walt Disney Animation Studios computer-animated short film directed by Chris Williams. The film premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June 2008.
The Animation Show of Shows is a traveling selection of the year's best animated short films. It is curated and presented by Acme Filmworks founder Ron Diamond. The show began in 1998 with the aim of showing the most original, funny, and intelligent short animated films from all over the world by presenting them to major animation studios, in hope of inspiring their influential animators and directors. Since 2007, a number of the films have been released as DVDs.
Arthur Christmas is a 2011 animated Christmas comedy film co-produced by Sony Pictures Animation and Aardman Animations. The film is Aardman's second mostly computer-animated feature film after 2006's Flushed Away. It was directed by Sarah Smith, co-directed by Barry Cook, and written by Smith and Peter Baynham. Featuring the voices of James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, and Ashley Jensen, the film centres on Arthur Claus, the clumsy but well-meaning son of Santa Claus, who discovers that his father's high-tech ship has failed to deliver one girl's present. Accompanied only by his free-spirited and reckless grandfather, an enthusiastic young Christmas elf obsessed with wrapping gifts for children, and a team of reindeer, he embarks on a mission to deliver the girl's present personally in the early morning hours of Christmas Day before sunrise.
Barry Cook is an American film director who has worked in the animated film industry since the 1980s. Cook and Tony Bancroft directed Mulan (1998), for which they won the 1998 Annie Award for Best Animated Feature. Cook was also the co-director for Arthur Christmas (2011), directed by Sarah Smith. Cook also directed Walking with Dinosaurs (2013) with Neil Nightingale.
Al Dente is a 1998 computer-animated short film created by Aardman Animations.
Off His Rockers is an animated short film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released in 1992. It was released theatrically accompanying the film Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. It was the first Disney animated short film to use digital ink and paint via CAPS process. The short was included on the laserdisc release of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. It has not received any other home video release. However it can be shown on YouTube.
Sunrise Productions is a South African computer animation studio based in Cape Town. Notable productions include Jungle Beat, a computer-animated series and its spin-off shows Munki and Trunk and The Explorers.
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.
Genius Loci is a 2020 French animated short film by Adrien Merigeau.
The 34th European Film Awards were presented in Berlin, Germany on 11 December 2021. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the awards went ahead without an in person audience, taking the form of a hybrid event, including pre-produced and live online.
Affairs of the Art is a 2021 British-Canadian traditional animation short film directed by Joanna Quinn and written by Les Mills. Quinn also co-stars as the voice of Beverly.
The 35th European Film Awards, presented by the European Film Academy to recognize achievements in European filmmaking, took place at the Harpa Conference and Concert Hall in Reykjavík, Iceland on 10 December 2022. According to the academy, films eligible for the awards are those that had their first official screening between 1 June 2021 and 31 May 2022 and have a European director.
