Joe Sims
BBC News, Bristol
Bristol’s Aardman creator on Wallace & Gromit BAFTA
One of the animators behind Wallace and Gromit is sure there will be another film “because it’s so fun to bring those characters to the world”.
The disaster-struck duo’s latest outing, Vengeance Most Fowl, scooped two gongs at the Baftas on Sunday.
Peter Lord, co-founder of Bristol’s Aardman Studios where the series is made, said the team were “delighted” by the film’s warm reception.
He credited Wallace and Gromit’s creator Nick Park’s “simple enthusiasm” for the characters’ global appeal.
Vengeance Most Fowl won Best Animated Film and the newly created Best Children’s and Family Film award.
Speaking to BBC Bristol, Mr Lord said: “I think we have all of us been so delighted by the success of this movie that we think ‘yes, we want to do that again’.
“Not because it’s good business, although it is good business, but because it’s so fun to bring those characters to the world.”
He continued: “We don’t make (Wallace and Gromit) for kids or families, we just do what amuses us.
“That’s the only honest thing we can do, and if you’re lucky and if you’ve somehow got the magic touch as Nick surely has, it ends up appealing to everybody.”
Reuters
Supervillain Feathers McGraw made his return in Vengeance Most Fowl
“Believe me we really appreciate it. We love the way everyone loves it. It’s great,” Mr Lord said.
He urged anyone with an interest in animation to give it a try, insisting “it’s actually very easy” to bring some toy cars or a lump of plasticine to life with a smart phone.
“Do that for fun because it’s a great feeling, and then just keep doing because it’s just like any other art form.
“It needs a lot of patience but it’s not difficult.”
Mr Lord said he hoped young people would look at Aardman’s films and think “there’s a career there”.
He said: “There is a career for many different sorts of people, there’s music, there’s painters and makers and electricians and riggers and lighting.
“There are so many roles that when we started out we had no idea they existed, and in Bristol we end up employing a whole raft of different talents.”
