Wallace & Gromit and the charm of claymation

During a recent interview with The Independent, the English filmmaker and animator Nick Park expressed his bemusement at Feathers McGraw, the anthropomorphic chicken antagonist from his latest animated film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, becoming a hated onscreen villain. Park’s being modest, of course, but the comment works as a tribute to the power of clay animation or ‘claymation’, a style of stop-motion animation wherein each figure being animated is handmade, usually out of plasticine clay. And yet, claymation maintains a significant following among animation enthusiasts because of the hand-crafted look one achieves with plasticine clay; plasticine’s association with childhood and the resultant nostalgia don’t hurt either. Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit series is the crown jewel for Aardman Animations, home to some of the finest claymation films and TV shows. The latter, a 1988 production called Alice, is a masterclass in stop-motion animation’s full bouquet of techniques, with some scenes deploying clay figurines.