Because of their popularity, the characters have been described as positive international cultural icons of both modern British culture and British people in general. BBC News called them "some of the best-known and best-loved stars to come out of the UK".[2]Icons has said they have done "more to improve the image of the English world-wide than any officially appointed ambassadors".[3]
Park has made pointed references that he was inspired by his childhood through the 1950s and 1960s in Lancashire in Northern England. Although not overtly set in any particular time – with the 1960s being the optimum time period placement, except for the considerable number of anachronisms – but with very shaky geography, where Wigan is seen at the end of Wallace's alliterative home address on his letters, though his accent comes from the Holme Valley of West Yorkshire and he is especially fond of Wensleydale cheese (from Wensleydale, North Yorkshire).
In January 2007, a five-film deal with DreamWorks and Aardman fell through after three films, due to creative differences, as well as the box office failure of Flushed Away. Park said later that DreamWorks executives wanted to Americanise the very British Wallace and Gromit after test screenings, which would have tarnished some of the duo's nostalgic charm. The fourth Wallace & Gromit short, A Matter of Loaf and Death, was Park's first production since the end of the DreamWorks deal. It was the most-watched television programme in the UK in 2008.[6]A Matter of Loaf and Death won the 2008 BAFTA Award for Best Short Animation and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2010.[7] In 2013, Peter Lord stated that there were no plans at the moment for a new short film, and Park announced in the following year that the declining health of Wallace's voice actor, Peter Sallis, had the possibility of preventing any future films despite the availability of Ben Whitehead.[8]
Wallace and Gromit bronze sculpture in Park's home town of Preston, Lancashire, England.
On 4 May 2017, Lord stated that more projects with the characters are likely while speaking at an animation event in Stuttgart, Germany. He said, "When Nick [Park]'s not drawing cavemen, he's drawing Wallace & Gromit ... I absolutely assume he will do another, but not a feature. I think he found it was too much. I think he liked the half-hour format."[9]
Sallis died on 2 June 2017 at the age of 96.[10] In 2018, Park said to Radio Times: "[Sallis] was such a special one-off person with such unique qualities, it would be hard to fill his shoes but I think he'd want us to carry on and I've got more Wallace and Gromit ideas."[11] In 2019, Park announced that a new Wallace & Gromit project is in development. "I can't give too much away because it would spoil it really, but it's Wallace & Gromit up to their old antics."[12][13] In May 2020, Aardman announced the release of The Big Fix Up, a Wallace & Gromit story in the form of an augmented reality (AR) mobile app. It features the voices of Miriam Margolyes, Isy Suttie and Jim Carter and was released on 18 January 2021.[14][15]
In September 2021, a bronze bench statue of Wallace & Gromit was unveiled in Preston, Lancashire, Park's home town.[16] In January 2022, a new film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, was announced, which is due to release in 2024 on Netflix worldwide, except for the UK where it will debut first on the BBC before also coming to Netflix at a later date.[17]
Wallace, with his dog Gromit, the main characters of the franchise
Wallace
Wallace lives, along with his pet dog Gromit, at 62 West Wallaby Street that is in a part of Wigan in Lancashire.
He usually wears brown woollen trousers, a white shirt with detachable sleeves, and a red tie under a green vee-necked knitted sleeveless sweater. He is fond of cheese, especially Wensleydale, with crackers.[18][19]
Nick Park, his creator, said: "He's a very self-contained figure. A very homely sort who doesn't mind the odd adventure." He is loosely based on Park's father and Park has never made it clear as to whether Wallace is the character's forename or surname, preferring to leave this ambiguous.[20][21][22]
Wallace is an inveterate inventor, creating elaborate contraptions that often do not work wholly as intended. Their appearance is similar to the illustrations of W. Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg, where Nick Park has said of Wallace that all his inventions are designed around the principle of using a "sledgehammer to crack a nut". Some of Wallace's contraptions are based on real-life inventions. For example, his method of waking up in the morning uses a bed that tips up to wake up its owner, an invention that was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 by Theophilus Carter.
To finance the development of his inventions, Wallace runs independent business ventures to varying levels of success. He adapts his house with increasingly elaborate contraptions, employing his devices & gadgets in various ways. Each business has a punning name, which reflect those of the titles of the films:
In 1995, in their third outing, A Close Shave, Wallace runs a window cleaning business with the aid of a motorcycle and sidecar with washing suds dispenser and mini-aeroplane features.
Come 2005, in their fourth outing, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace runs a humane pest-control service — Anti-Pesto — with a specially adapted 1964 Austin A35 delivery van conversion, incorporating his Bun-Vac 6000 to capture creatures, (nearly all of which are rabbits), and keeping these in the cellar of his house.
By 2008, in their fifth outing, A Matter of Loaf and Death, Wallace has extensively rebuilt his house with extensions, particularly an old-fashioned sail windmill out of the roof to facilitate his new bakery, called Top Bun, with a refitting of his Austin A35 delivery van, incorporating a multi-function car radio with record player and toaster functions.
For 2024, in their sixth outing, Vengeance Most Fowl, Wallace has repurposed his contraptions – particularly his Anti-Pesto guard garden gnomes – in the development of Gnome Improvements where "no job is too small".
While he has shown himself to be skilled to some degree in the businesses he creates, an unexpected flaw in the inventions he uses to assist him in his latest venture or simple, but odd, happenstance ends up being pivotal to the resolution of the story.
In the first photo shown on The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, it was revealed that Wallace once had a full head of hair and a very thick moustache with muttonchops. On the photo that shows Gromit's graduation at Dogwarts, he had lost his beard, but still had a little hair, in the form of sideburns just above his ears. In The Wrong Trousers, he still uses a hair-dryer. In A Matter of Loaf and Death, when Wallace is talking to Gromit, a picture is seen behind Gromit of Wallace with a brown beard and brown hair.
Wallace has had three romantic interests. The first was wool shop owner Wendolene Ramsbottom,[26] which ended quickly when Wendolene told Wallace that she was allergic to cheese. The second was Lady Campanula Tottington in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, whom Wallace fondly calls "Totty". In A Matter of Loaf and Death, Wallace becomes engaged to Piella Bakewell, who turns out to be a serial killer of bakers.[27]
"Gromit doesn't ever say a word, but there has never been a more expressive character (animated or otherwise) to grace our screens."
—Empire magazine's entry for Gromit placing the dog first in their list of "the 50 best animated movie characters".[28]
Gromit is a beagle, with a cream-coloured short-hair coat and oversized floppy dark brown ears, who is Wallace's pet dog and best friend.[29] He is very intelligent, having graduated from "Dogwarts University" ("Dogwarts" being a pun on "Hogwarts", the wizard school from the Harry Potter books) with a double first in Engineering for Dogs.[30] He likes knitting, playing chess, reading the newspaper, tea and cooking. His prized possessions include his alarm clock, dog bone, brush, and a framed photo of himself with Wallace. He is very handy with electronic equipment and an excellent aeroplane pilot. He often threatens the plans of the antagonists he and Wallace encounter in their adventures. Sometimes, Gromit ignores Wallace's orders, such as in A Close Shave and Shopper 13, where Wallace orders him to get rid of Shaun, but Gromit does not. Gromit's birthday is 12 February.[31] In The Wrong Trousers, he is seen circling the date on a calendar.
Gromit has no visible mouth and expresses himself through facial expressions and body language. Peter Hawkins originally intended to voice Gromit, but Park dropped the idea when he realised how Gromit's thoughts and feelings could be known through movement with some canine noises on rare occasions.[32][33] Many critics believe that Gromit's silence makes him the perfect straight man, with a pantomime expressiveness that drew favourable comparisons to Buster Keaton.[34] He does at times make dog-like noises, such as yelps and growling.[35] According to the fortieth anniversary documentary A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman, Gromit was originally supposed to be a cat, but the idea was dropped as Park realised that animating a dog was easier.
Generally speaking, Gromit's tastes are more in vogue than those of Wallace; this being one of the many ways they contrast with each other as characters. Gromit seems to have a significant interest in encyclopaedic, classical and philosophical literature, and popular culture, including film and music. Electronics for Dogs has been a firm favourite since A Grand Day Out, and in The Wrong Trousers Gromit's bookshelves feature titles such as Kites, Sticks, Sheep, Penguins, Rockets, Bones and Stars, while he is seen reading The Republic, by Pluto (a nod to the Disney character of the same name and a pun on Plato) and Crime and Punishment, by Fido Dogstoyevsky (a pun on Fyodor Dostoyevsky). Gromit's various possessions make extensive use of puns: A Matter of Loaf and Death features "Pup Fiction" (Pulp Fiction), "The Dogfather" (The Godfather), "Where Beagles Dare" (Where Eagles Dare), "Bite Club" (Fight Club) and "The Bone Identity" (The Bourne Identity) all as book titles, and "Citizen Canine" (Citizen Kane) as a film poster. His taste in music has been shown to cover Bach (presumably punning on "bark"), "Poochini" (a play on Puccini), "McFlea" (McFly), "The Beagles" (the Beatles) and "Red Hot Chili Puppies" (Red Hot Chili Peppers).
Gromit gains his own love interest in A Matter of Loaf and Death, when he becomes attached to Fluffles, a poodle. Fluffles reciprocates his affection and joins Wallace and Gromit delivering bread at the end of the film, and the three drive off into the sunset, making a delivery and listening to "Puppy Love" (performed, according to the record cover, by "Doggy Osmond").
NASA named one of its new prototype Mars explorer robots after Gromit in 2005.[36] On 1 April 2007, HMV announced that Gromit would stand in for Nipper for a three-month period, promoting children's DVDs in its UK stores.[37]
Although not overtly setting the series in any particular town, Nick Park had previously hinted that its milieu was inspired by thoughts of 1950s Wigan, reinforced by an A–Z Wigan being displayed on Wallace's Anti-Pesto van in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.[38] In The Wrong Trousers, Gromit picks up a letter at the Wallace & Gromit residence addressed to "62 West Wallaby Street, Wigan".[38] The address includes a postcode of WG7 7FU, though this does not match any street in Wigan, whose postcodes begin with the letters WN.[39] This address can be seen in the Cracking Contraptions episode "Shopper 13".
The Wallace & Gromit films are shot using the stop motion animation technique.[74] After detailed storyboarding, set and plasticine model construction, the films are shot one frame at a time, moving the models of the characters slightly to give the impression of movement in the final film. As is common with other animation techniques, the stop motion animation in Wallace & Gromit may duplicate frames if there is little motion, and in action scenes sometimes multiple exposures per frame are used to produce a faux motion blur. Because a second of film constitutes 24 separate frames, even a short half-hour film like A Close Shave takes a great deal of time to animate. General quotes on the speed of animation of a Wallace & Gromit film put the filming rate at typically around 30 frames per day per animator.[75]
Museum set from The Wrong Trousers, on display at the National Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire
Some effects, particularly the fire, smoke and floating bunnies in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, proved impossible to create in stop motion and were rendered by computer animation specialists, MPC film.[76] MPC film studied the set for three months to create clay-like animation to match the stop-motion production. By paying close attention to detail, MPC was able to make the animated bunnies blend in with the clay bunnies. Adding imperfections such as fingerprints along with texture to the animated bunnies helped enhance the effect. MPC's collaboration resulted in over 700 effects to aid the film along with colouring to match the visuals.[76]
Most models were destroyed in the 2005 Aardman studio fire, but a set from A Matter of Loaf and Death is presently on display at the We The Curious science centre.[77] The set and several props from the museum featured in The Wrong Trousers survived as well, as they were being kept at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire, before the fire occurred.
Music
The music featured in every film was written by British film composer Julian Nott. The theme song was used to wake up astronauts aboard space shuttle mission STS-132 in May 2010.[78] It has been suggested on BBC Radio 4's PM that the theme should become the England football supporters' song, instead of the main title theme of The Great Escape.[79]
Other media
Video games
A Wallace & Gromit interactive CD-ROM game from 1996, named Wallace & Gromit Fun Pack, was released for the PC, containing the Crackin' Compendium with three mini-games based on the three original animated shorts as well as brief video clips. The other program in the Fun Pack the Customise-O-Matic contained wallpapers, screen savers and sounds that could be assigned as system sounds.[80] A sequel Fun Pack 2 was released in 2000 featuring enhanced graphics and two new games as well as a remake of the Great Train Game.
The characters were associated with a 144-issue fortnightly digest called Techno Quest, published by Eaglemoss Publications starting in 1997. It was designed to get children interested in science and technology.[81]
In 1997, an animated screensaver themed video game entitled Wallace & Gromit Cracking Animator was released. Screensaver games were made by Dibase.[82] Players could create their own multimedia animations through the collation of things like sound effects, sets, characters and props. Players could manipulate the facial movements of characters to synchronise their expressions with dialogue.[83] Players could choose to make their finished creation their screensaver, or choose one of the pre-made screensaver games.[83] The Boston Herald offered a rating of 2.5 stars, noting that creativity is limited.[84]
In September 2003, Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo was released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, and Microsoft Windows. This separate story sees the duo take on Feathers McGraw (of The Wrong Trousers) again. Still obsessed with diamonds, he escapes from the penguin enclosure of West Wallaby Zoo, where he was "imprisoned" at the end of The Wrong Trousers, and takes over the entire zoo, kidnapping young animals and forcing their parents to work for him, helping him turn the zoo into a diamond mine.
In 2005, a video game of The Curse of The Were-Rabbit was released for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, following the plot of the film as Wallace and Gromit work as vermin-catchers, protecting customers' vegetable gardens from rabbits, using a "BunGun".[85] Gameplay for the Project Zoo involve players exclusively controlling Gromit, as Wallace functions as a helper non-player character, but in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, gameplay shifts between the two, and includes two-player cooperative play.[86] Both games were developed by Frontier Developments with the assistance of Aardman, with Peter Sallis reprising his role as Wallace. Project Zoo was published by BAM! Entertainment, while The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was published by Konami.[86]
In July 2008, developer Telltale Games announced a new series of episodic video games based on the characters, called Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures.[87] The first episode in Grand Adventures, "Fright of the Bumblebees", was released on 23 March 2009.[88] The second episode, "The Last Resort", was released on 5 May 2009.[89] Two more episodes, "Muzzled!" and "The Bogey Man", were released in later 2009. The four episodes have separately been released on Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360.
There are also several interactive games on the official Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Timmy Time websites.
Comic
British publisher Titan Magazines started producing a monthly Wallace & Gromit comic after the debut of Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The characters still run Anti-Pesto, and both Shaun and Feathers McGraw have appeared in the comic.[93]
The two characters appeared in the monthly BeanoMAX comic until its closure in June 2013, and now appear every four weeks in The Beano.[94] They are heavily featured in 'Aardmag', the free online magazine that is unofficial but supported by Aardman Animations.[95] Nick Park guest-edited the 70th birthday issue of The Beano weekly, and so this issue contained numerous Wallace & Gromit references.[96]
On 17 May 2010, they began appearing daily in The Sun.[97] It is credited to Titan and Aardman, with scripts written by Richy Chandler, Robert Etherington, Mike Garley, Ned Hartley, Rik Hoskin, David Leach, Luke Paton, J.P. Rutter, Rona Simpson and Gordon Volke, art by Sylvia Bennion, Jay Clarke, Jimmy Hansen, Viv Heath, Mychailo Kazybrid and Brian Williamson. It replaced George and Lynne. A graphic novel compiling all 311 daily strips was released on 8 October 2013, and a second volume followed on 4 November 2014.[98] A third volume was released on 25 March 2015,[99] and a fourth volume was released on 9 September 2015.[100]
The Lost Slipper and Curse of the Ramsbottoms, 1998
Anoraknophobia, 1998
Crackers in Space, 1999
A Grand Day Out, 1999
Catch of the Day, 2002
The Whippet Vanishes, 2004
A Pier Too Far, 2004
The Bootiful Game, 2005
Plots in Space, 2007
A Grand Day Out, 2009
The Wrong Trousers, 2010
The Complete Newspaper Comic Strips Collection, 2013
The Complete Newspaper Comic Strips Collection, Volume 2, 2014
The Complete Newspaper Comic Strips Collection, Volume 3, 2015
The Complete Newspaper Comic Strips Collection, Volume 4, 2015
Theatre
In November 1997 the characters appeared in a play called Wallace And Gromit™ Alive on Stage in a Grand Night Out.[101]
On 9 March 2011, Shaun the Sheep made its live theatre début in Shaun's Big Show.[102] The 100-minute-long musical/dance show features all the regular characters, including Bitzer, Shirley and Timmy.
In 2003, Aardman produced a cinematic commercial for the Renault Kangoo starring Wallace and Gromit. The ad played in front of several summer blockbusters in top British cinemas. The commercial, entitled "The Kangoo-matic", was Wallace & Gromit's first advertisement. Later Wallace & Gromit commercials were made for Jacob's Cream Crackers, energy supplier Npower and beverage PG Tips.
The duo were used to promote a Harvey Nichols store that opened in Bristol (where Aardman is based) in 2008. The pictures show them, and Lady Tottington from Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, wearing designer clothes and items.[104] They were used to prevent a Wensleydale cheese factory from shutting down because of financial difficulties after a member of staff came up with the idea of using Wallace and Gromit as mascots, as Wensleydale is one of Wallace's favourite cheeses.[18][105]
On 28 March 2009, The Science Museum in London opened an exhibition called "Wallace & Gromit present a World of Cracking Ideas". The family-orientated show, open until 1 November 2009,[106] hoped to inspire children to be inventive.[107] Wallace and Gromit were featured in many exhibition-exclusive videos, as well as one announcing the opening of the exhibition.[106]
Wallace and Gromit appeared in a one-minute special for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II called Jubilee Bunt-a-thon.[111][112] In 2012, Wallace and Gromit featured on an advert saying "Inventing For Britain" which was part of a poster campaign to promote British trade and business aboard in the year they hosted the Olympics.
In August 2012, they presented an edition of The BBC Proms, Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels, as Prom 20 of the 2012 season.[113] Because of its popularity, Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels became a full touring show in 2013. It premièred at The Plenary in Melbourne, Australia on 9 February 2013. It was performed at other venues throughout 2013, with A Matter of Loaf and Death screened at each performance.[114]
In 2013 and 2014 the pair appeared in a nationwide TV, press and cinema campaign promoting the British government's "Holidays at Home are Great" directive, called Wallace & Gromit's Great UK Adventure.[115]
In December 2019, they appeared in a DFS advert created by Krow to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Helena Bonham Carter reprised her role as Lady Tottington with new dialogue for this advert.[116]
Charity
The "Bark at 'Ee" sculpture, one of 80 giant fibreglass sculptures of Gromit decorated for the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity.
Wallace & Gromit spearheaded the fundraising for two children's charities,[117] Wallace & Gromit's Children's Foundation,[118] which supports children's hospices and hospitals in the United Kingdom, and Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal,[119] the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity. In July 2013, 80 giant fibreglass decorated sculptures of Gromit were distributed around Bristol as part of a Nick Park-inspired project to raise funds for the charity. The project is named Gromit Unleashed and sculptures were decorated by a range of artists and celebrities, including Joanna Lumley, Sir Peter Blake, Trevor Baylis and Jools Holland.[120] A similar project featuring Shaun the Sheep called Shaun in the City was in 2015.[121] A third was placed in 2018 called Gromit Unleashed 2, also featuring Wallace & Shaun. In 2020 Gromit Unleashed: The Grand Adventure will be in The Mall, Cribbs Causeway featuring 15 sculptures of Wallace, Gromit, Shaun and Feathers.[122] On 23 August 2023 a fourth trail was announced, the trail in Bristol will run in 2025.[123]
The ride, which cost £5.25 million to make, was created by Blackpool Pleasure Beach design in association with Aardman Animations. The cars on the ride are designed on one of Wallace's slippers, so that, when a rider is seated, it is as if they are sitting inside a large slipper. The ride lasts almost four minutes, and features scenes from A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and A Matter of Loaf and Death along with some archive audio and some newly recorded lines from Ben Whitehead as the voice of Wallace.[124]
In 2007, a spin-off series Shaun the Sheep was created for the character of Shaun, first introduced in 1995's A Close Shave. In the series, Shaun lives with his flock at Mossy Bottom Farm, a traditional small northern English farm. In each episode, their latest attempt to add excitement to their dull mundane life as livestock somehow snowballs into a fantastic sitcom-style escapade, most often with the help of their fascination with human doings and devices. This usually brings them into conflict—and often into partnership—with the farm sheepdog Bitzer, while they all are simultaneously trying to avoid discovery by the Farmer. Following the success of the series, two series of 1-minute shorts were created – Mossy Bottom Shorts and Championsheeps—followed by a television special The Farmer's Llamas (2015) and two feature films, Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) and A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019).
In 2009, a spin-off of Shaun the Sheep, Timmy Time, was created centring on the character of the same name. In the series, Timmy and his friends[125] have to learn to share, make friends and accept their mistakes.[126] They are supervised by two teachers, Harriet the Heron and Osbourne the Owl. The show is aimed at pre-school-aged children which the company described as "a natural step for Aardman".[127]
References
^Gromit occasionally makes dog-like noises, such as barks and yelps."Gromit Speaks". Retrieved 6 October 2014.
