And then for his next work to be The Wrong Trousers, a near perfect film with the ending train sequence widely acclaimed as one of the best action sequences ever put to film
Theres a scene there that's one of my favorite comedy bits in any film, the breakfast scene where you see a buzzer and light going off repeatedly, like they have some sort of computer system to indicate it is breakfast time... but then it cuts to Wallace in bed and he is just repeatedly pressing a button next the the bed, with the same specific cadence, to make the buzzer sound. I don't know why I find that so hilarious.
...which is echoed in the final shot of Feathers McGraw grasping the bars on the window of his cell, which zooms out to reveal that it's set in a mural
To prove your point: here's the Hollywood Reporter's "Directors Roundtable" video where Danny Boyle mentions it's one of the greatest action sequences of all time and everyone else (Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Alejandro Inarrito, Tom Hooper, David O. Russel) immediately agree. David O. Russel even says it was an inspiration for him for the final action sequence in Three Kings:
Probably the only heist sequence where the burglar is asleep. The way he dangles is so relaxed, it's a great counterpoint to the lodger wiping the sweat off his brow.
I would say that all the best elements from the wrong trousers train scene were already done two years earlier in "The Good The bad and the Tigger" from the New adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
I have just looked it up what you're referencing, and I disagree.
The W&G train scene is a chase sequence. It has derring-do, thrills and spills. One moment the baddy is ahead, the next moment the goodies are ahead... high-octane stuff. The WtP cartoon doesn't have any of that, it's a sedate cartoon for kiddies. Tigger standing next to the train and carefully placing train tracks before the train gets there is nothing like Gromit sitting on the train and having to franticly lay track.
Well, there is one similar joke where Tigger quickly lays down train tracks in front of a running toy train before it runs off of the tracks. That might have been an inspiration, who knows, but it's executed very differently either way:
... and then the episode becomes a parody of Westerns as it switches to the "imagination vision" of the characters, and the story and gags are not really comparable to The Wrong Trousers at all after that.
I mean, I watched taped episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh religiously as a small child and has strong nostalgia goggles for it, and even I don't think that it is on the same level. Even childhood me would have agreed: I remember loving and enjoying this episode (just like all the others), but the first time I watched The Wrong Trousers as a child I was genuinely laughing so much I had sore core muscles the day after, because I had never seen a film that funny and amazing before in my life.
Its not the elements, the idea of "Laying track infront of a toy train" is a pretty obvious idea. What makes the Wallace and Gromit scene so classic is the direction - by which I mean camera angles, camera movement, edits, and the 'acting' which are all akin to a hollywood action sequence but (somewhat absurdly) set in a claymation world. Think about the part where gromit goes under the table -
- you see gromit glance up, his eyebrows communicate that he's seen something challenging
- shot of table approaching, an impossible forest of wooden legs
- shot from the side of gromit (impossibly) finding a winding path under the table, brows furrowed but determined
- shot of wallace at the back of the train, from the side, following the same path
- shot from under the table, facing forwards, seeing our heroes continue into the room
That just one four-second segment of the chase. Its an absolute masterclass of editing and camera angles. And its also impossible, but it makes sense to the viewer.
Also, consider that of the three characters in the chase, only one can talk. Gromit expresses everything with his eyes and body language. And the penguin has barely any facial expression at all, just two black eyes. Mostly the penguin's emotions are expressed through neck movements. But nonetheless he's a classic antagonist.
If you like single-person animation work, watch "Kono Express".[1] There are five episodes so far, with new ones coming out about once a month. It's a one-person effort, by a former Disney animator. He's using both AI and Unreal Engine.
The quality starts out good and reaches full Disney level by the later episodes.
This is way, way beyond the usual vertical drama AI slop.
It's a project that raises the question of whether the whole Disney studio system is obsolete.
I have a nephew who is in stop motion animation, since he was in his early teens and now getting close to his 3rd decade, doing movies now. Amount of work he had to do in early times all by himself was absolutely astounding. The people who have passion for it have PASSION in capital letters and then some. I and your entire family are so proud of you Willy, even though I am pretty sure you don't read HN.!!!
I first saw "Creature Comforts", "A Grand Day Out" and "The Wrong Trousers" in the local cinema in Singapore as a feature film many years ago.
When "The Wrong Trousers" got to the part where Gromit was frantically laying tracks for the train, the entire audience was laughing and clapping, including me. :-)
The parralels with how Orson Welles learned how to be a film maker are striking. There is a sweet spot in both Wallace & Grommit and Citizen Kane where both film makers are doing things they had no idea they _'weren't'_ supposed to do. A lesson to us all perhaps.
I was sitting at the movies with my kids 2w ago, watching the last Shawn the Sheep movie. Reflecting over how in 2026 they are still animating frame by frame with clay puppets, how they still embrace their craft while a cheap and easy solution exists, and how good the results look. And wondering what that was telling about me. Shawn the Sheep had a profound impact on me, an adult in my fourties.
I always thought Wallace was a self-portrait of Nick Park. If your find a video interview with him, the way his mouth moves when he speaks is totally Wallace. It's uncanny.
Nick Park has said in interviews that Wallace is basically his dad, who was always inventing and tinkering with things in his shed, though he didn't quite make the connection until after he'd made the film.
> His mother was a dressmaker (“She still is really. She’s a spry 88”) and his father was a photographer. He was also — didn’t I read somewhere? — an amateur inventor. “ ‘Inventor’ might be too strong a word,” Park says. “He was always in the shed. ‘Oh, I’ll make a shelf’. ‘Oh, I need a stool, I’ll go and make one.’ ”
> Park’s father sounds like the inspiration for his own most famous inventor character. Yet the director didn’t realise the dad-and-Wallace connection until after making his first film featuring the suburban boffin and weird dog. That was A Grand Day Out (1989), his graduate movie project for the National Film and Television School.
> “He loved being compared to Wallace. I hadn’t realised the similarity till that film. It was after Wallace had built the rocket to the Moon in his living room that I thought, ‘I’ve made a film about my dad!’ ”
I can believe Wallace's gestures (and mouth movements) are Park himself, as that's likely the only reference material he had to hand.
I saw a poster for a new Shaun the Sheep movie recently, so they're still making them! And it looks like they're still doing it "properly", old school stop motion? That's fantastic.
Amazing dedication and very inspiring. It's so awesome to read about what great things people can do when they are so focused on accomplishing something. And as other commenters have said, had no idea it took so many years of (mostly) one person.
Grand Day Out is a fantastic watch, the animation, characters and story telling are so fun for really anyone of any age.
It's just a guess, but he could be referring to the stop motion animation movies that were popular in the 60's. Ray Harryhausen famously made a career out of the technique.
Not of that era, but Moral Orel is a modern (2005-2008) parody of Davey and Goliath (not sure parody is the right word, Moral Orel is kind of its own thing, but apes the style of Davey and Goliath.)
Moral Orel is part homage and part satire of Davey and Goliath, but also more than that. It's hilarious, disturbing, and poignant, all at once. Case in point, the "I'm a church" scene:
Cel animation was vaguely limited to 2D scenes due to the flatness of their canvas, while stop-motion could be actually 3D, even if it wasn't filmed with that effect.
Early experiments with live animation shows unfortunately were discontinued entirely, after encountering grievous injuries and labor complaints from the animator artists.
I love the atmosphere of the original 3 features. A Grand Day Out especially, it makes great use of pauses and sweeping ethereal wide shots to give a great sense of scale and isolation.
As great as the post-A Close shave features are, something was definitely lost when they started adding more characters and expanded the universe.
i watched wallace and gromit as a very small kid, so i didn't really understand anything.
but it made me miss my dad a lot and i'd cry the whole time. we had it on vhs and there were like 4 or 5 of them, so i'd watch them over and over. i was like 3 or 4 or something.
its weird to say but even as an adult i cannot make it through more than 10-15 min of the movie.
I remember when A Grand Day Out and Creature Comforts were being shown on the animation festival circuit. It seemed immediately apparent that something new and special had appeared.
> "'There now follows a sequence where Wallace and Gromit build a rocket.' It was just a paragraph. I started on that paragraph, and a year and a half later, I actually finished the sequence!"
This is just incredible, I had absolutely no idea of the context of 'a Grand Day Out' being a solo school project.
There's no way I'd imagined it wasn't done in a professional setup by a full team.
A real standout part is how he commuted by bus to the studio for years, to work on it mostly alone. Truly amazing dedication to a passion project.
I haven't watched it in probably 25 years but I'll find it now and appreciate it all the more for knowing this!
And then for his next work to be The Wrong Trousers, a near perfect film with the ending train sequence widely acclaimed as one of the best action sequences ever put to film
https://youtu.be/jrmZIgVoQw4?feature=shared
Theres a scene there that's one of my favorite comedy bits in any film, the breakfast scene where you see a buzzer and light going off repeatedly, like they have some sort of computer system to indicate it is breakfast time... but then it cuts to Wallace in bed and he is just repeatedly pressing a button next the the bed, with the same specific cadence, to make the buzzer sound. I don't know why I find that so hilarious.
For me its gromit cutting eye holes in a box which turns out to coincidentally have a face drawn on it
...which is echoed in the final shot of Feathers McGraw grasping the bars on the window of his cell, which zooms out to reveal that it's set in a mural
To prove your point: here's the Hollywood Reporter's "Directors Roundtable" video where Danny Boyle mentions it's one of the greatest action sequences of all time and everyone else (Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Alejandro Inarrito, Tom Hooper, David O. Russel) immediately agree. David O. Russel even says it was an inspiration for him for the final action sequence in Three Kings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7qKKQrSBY&t=581s
"The Wrong Trousers" also has one of the best heist scenes in cinema imo, up there with Rififi. It gets overshadowed by the action sequence though.
Probably the only heist sequence where the burglar is asleep. The way he dangles is so relaxed, it's a great counterpoint to the lodger wiping the sweat off his brow.
Thank you for this! I had no idea these roundtables existed. I wish that interviewer would stop interrupting though :s Apart from that this is gold!
I would say that all the best elements from the wrong trousers train scene were already done two years earlier in "The Good The bad and the Tigger" from the New adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
I have just looked it up what you're referencing, and I disagree.
The W&G train scene is a chase sequence. It has derring-do, thrills and spills. One moment the baddy is ahead, the next moment the goodies are ahead... high-octane stuff. The WtP cartoon doesn't have any of that, it's a sedate cartoon for kiddies. Tigger standing next to the train and carefully placing train tracks before the train gets there is nothing like Gromit sitting on the train and having to franticly lay track.
WtP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5l_fGY-EfA
W&G: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrmZIgVoQw4
Well, there is one similar joke where Tigger quickly lays down train tracks in front of a running toy train before it runs off of the tracks. That might have been an inspiration, who knows, but it's executed very differently either way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5l_fGY-EfA&list=PL65tAzyNzM...
... and then the episode becomes a parody of Westerns as it switches to the "imagination vision" of the characters, and the story and gags are not really comparable to The Wrong Trousers at all after that.
I mean, I watched taped episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh religiously as a small child and has strong nostalgia goggles for it, and even I don't think that it is on the same level. Even childhood me would have agreed: I remember loving and enjoying this episode (just like all the others), but the first time I watched The Wrong Trousers as a child I was genuinely laughing so much I had sore core muscles the day after, because I had never seen a film that funny and amazing before in my life.
Its not the elements, the idea of "Laying track infront of a toy train" is a pretty obvious idea. What makes the Wallace and Gromit scene so classic is the direction - by which I mean camera angles, camera movement, edits, and the 'acting' which are all akin to a hollywood action sequence but (somewhat absurdly) set in a claymation world. Think about the part where gromit goes under the table -
- you see gromit glance up, his eyebrows communicate that he's seen something challenging
- shot of table approaching, an impossible forest of wooden legs
- shot from the side of gromit (impossibly) finding a winding path under the table, brows furrowed but determined
- shot of wallace at the back of the train, from the side, following the same path
- shot from under the table, facing forwards, seeing our heroes continue into the room
That just one four-second segment of the chase. Its an absolute masterclass of editing and camera angles. And its also impossible, but it makes sense to the viewer.
Also, consider that of the three characters in the chase, only one can talk. Gromit expresses everything with his eyes and body language. And the penguin has barely any facial expression at all, just two black eyes. Mostly the penguin's emotions are expressed through neck movements. But nonetheless he's a classic antagonist.
If you like single-person animation work, watch "Kono Express".[1] There are five episodes so far, with new ones coming out about once a month. It's a one-person effort, by a former Disney animator. He's using both AI and Unreal Engine. The quality starts out good and reaches full Disney level by the later episodes.
This is way, way beyond the usual vertical drama AI slop. It's a project that raises the question of whether the whole Disney studio system is obsolete.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikm5lP0zsi0
I have a nephew who is in stop motion animation, since he was in his early teens and now getting close to his 3rd decade, doing movies now. Amount of work he had to do in early times all by himself was absolutely astounding. The people who have passion for it have PASSION in capital letters and then some. I and your entire family are so proud of you Willy, even though I am pretty sure you don't read HN.!!!
I first saw "Creature Comforts", "A Grand Day Out" and "The Wrong Trousers" in the local cinema in Singapore as a feature film many years ago.
When "The Wrong Trousers" got to the part where Gromit was frantically laying tracks for the train, the entire audience was laughing and clapping, including me. :-)
My favorite gag is Gromit reading a book entitled "Electronics for Dogs".
Not Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoyevsky? Or The Republic by Pluto? Or A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woof?
The parralels with how Orson Welles learned how to be a film maker are striking. There is a sweet spot in both Wallace & Grommit and Citizen Kane where both film makers are doing things they had no idea they _'weren't'_ supposed to do. A lesson to us all perhaps.
How appropriate that "Rose Bud" makes an appearance in _A Grand Day Out_!
I was sitting at the movies with my kids 2w ago, watching the last Shawn the Sheep movie. Reflecting over how in 2026 they are still animating frame by frame with clay puppets, how they still embrace their craft while a cheap and easy solution exists, and how good the results look. And wondering what that was telling about me. Shawn the Sheep had a profound impact on me, an adult in my fourties.
I always thought Wallace was a self-portrait of Nick Park. If your find a video interview with him, the way his mouth moves when he speaks is totally Wallace. It's uncanny.
Nick Park has said in interviews that Wallace is basically his dad, who was always inventing and tinkering with things in his shed, though he didn't quite make the connection until after he'd made the film.
https://www.ft.com/content/10922a92-00f2-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c...
> His mother was a dressmaker (“She still is really. She’s a spry 88”) and his father was a photographer. He was also — didn’t I read somewhere? — an amateur inventor. “ ‘Inventor’ might be too strong a word,” Park says. “He was always in the shed. ‘Oh, I’ll make a shelf’. ‘Oh, I need a stool, I’ll go and make one.’ ”
> Park’s father sounds like the inspiration for his own most famous inventor character. Yet the director didn’t realise the dad-and-Wallace connection until after making his first film featuring the suburban boffin and weird dog. That was A Grand Day Out (1989), his graduate movie project for the National Film and Television School.
> “He loved being compared to Wallace. I hadn’t realised the similarity till that film. It was after Wallace had built the rocket to the Moon in his living room that I thought, ‘I’ve made a film about my dad!’ ”
I can believe Wallace's gestures (and mouth movements) are Park himself, as that's likely the only reference material he had to hand.
The humor in those is so perfect. "Have you seen this chicken?"
"Good grief, it's you!"
Again!
Enjoyed this, especially seeing the sketches.
I saw a poster for a new Shaun the Sheep movie recently, so they're still making them! And it looks like they're still doing it "properly", old school stop motion? That's fantastic.
Student animators are cheaper than Irix workstations
Amazing dedication and very inspiring. It's so awesome to read about what great things people can do when they are so focused on accomplishing something. And as other commenters have said, had no idea it took so many years of (mostly) one person.
Grand Day Out is a fantastic watch, the animation, characters and story telling are so fun for really anyone of any age.
Wow, this sparked some good memories watching Wallace and Gromit with my dad almost 30 years ago. Thanks for sharing!
> Asked about his preference for stop motion, Park once explained:
> I think it’s because I’d been brought up on a diet of children’s 3D animation.
What is 3d animation referring to here? This guy grew up in the 60's.
It's just a guess, but he could be referring to the stop motion animation movies that were popular in the 60's. Ray Harryhausen famously made a career out of the technique.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkLEZSWe5u4
Gumby and Davey and Goliath come to mind.
Not of that era, but Moral Orel is a modern (2005-2008) parody of Davey and Goliath (not sure parody is the right word, Moral Orel is kind of its own thing, but apes the style of Davey and Goliath.)
Moral Orel is part homage and part satire of Davey and Goliath, but also more than that. It's hilarious, disturbing, and poignant, all at once. Case in point, the "I'm a church" scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyNJ03l82sw
If you're an Aimee Mann fan, you might enjoy this Moral Orel mashup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OokJP_c2cCw
Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor The Engine, Trumpton, Camberwick Green. The UK was full of this stuff in the late 60s and early 70s
Postman Pat too!
He also mentions Morph who was Aardman's existing claymation character:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morph_(TV_series)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Der9xbuVJs
Cel animation was vaguely limited to 2D scenes due to the flatness of their canvas, while stop-motion could be actually 3D, even if it wasn't filmed with that effect.
Early experiments with live animation shows unfortunately were discontinued entirely, after encountering grievous injuries and labor complaints from the animator artists.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701245/characters/nm0534134/?i...
I love the atmosphere of the original 3 features. A Grand Day Out especially, it makes great use of pauses and sweeping ethereal wide shots to give a great sense of scale and isolation.
As great as the post-A Close shave features are, something was definitely lost when they started adding more characters and expanded the universe.
I always thought that Shaun the sheep is 3d animated. Learning that those shows are made the old way is so interesting!
Exceptional results come from the things that people do when no one is looking.
i watched wallace and gromit as a very small kid, so i didn't really understand anything.
but it made me miss my dad a lot and i'd cry the whole time. we had it on vhs and there were like 4 or 5 of them, so i'd watch them over and over. i was like 3 or 4 or something.
its weird to say but even as an adult i cannot make it through more than 10-15 min of the movie.
This is a touching sentiment. Thanks for sharing it.
I remember when A Grand Day Out and Creature Comforts were being shown on the animation festival circuit. It seemed immediately apparent that something new and special had appeared.
> "'There now follows a sequence where Wallace and Gromit build a rocket.' It was just a paragraph. I started on that paragraph, and a year and a half later, I actually finished the sequence!"
Very relatable experience.