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Wallace & Gromit and the charm of claymation
Summary
The latest gem from Aardman shines a light on this animation subgenre, which involves the use of clay figures and stop-motion
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 (released on Netflix earlier this month), becoming a hated onscreen villain. “They think he is evil. But he is only a four-inch-tall piece of plasticine!" 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. As with other forms of stop-motion, each still picture (‘frame’) is then recorded and played rapidly before the viewer, generally at 10-12 frames per second.
Within the world of stop-motion, claymation is considered a labour-intensive technique. There are several other stop-motion techniques where the logistics and the effort/output ratio are a bit kinder—paper-cutouts, Lego-based animation (called ‘brickfilms’), ‘lightbox’ animation (the manipulation of light and shadow in high-contrast images). 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.
Consider the painstaking craft behind the scene where Feathers McGraw reveals the full scope of his scheming—a submarine filled with evil robots doing his bidding. The sleek-looking submarine emerges from the water like a postmodern Kraken, before the camera turns to McGraw playing the piano, turning his swivel-chair around like the best bad guys. The level of detailing in each clay-piece here is truly impressive (how did they make the clay-piano obey actual piano-mechanics?).
It’s no surprise that Vengeance Most Fowl is so intensely cinematic, so clearly in love with the history of the medium. The Wallace and Gromit films, beginning with A Grand Day Out (1989), have been admired as much for their impeccable craft and animation knowhow as they are for the camaraderie between the titular characters—Wallace the absent-minded inventor and Gromit his silent, resourceful, exaggeratedly intellectual dog (in Vengeance Most Fowl, he is shown reading Virginia Woolf at bedtime and John Milton over breakfast toast). A chase sequence in The Wrong Trousers (1993), for example, is regularly hailed as Buster Keaton-esque in its inventiveness and derring-do. Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit series is the crown jewel for Aardman Animations (founded 1972), home to some of the finest claymation films and TV shows. Viewers around the world have also embraced Morph, a “small, terracotta-skinned plasticine man" living on a tabletop since 1977, and Shaun the Sheep, a secondary character from the Wallace and Gromit series who went on to get his own films and his own acclaimed TV series.
In India, perhaps the most famous mainstream example of claymation came from the gorgeous opening credits sequence of Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par (2007). The man behind that sequence, animation film designer and artist Dhimant Vyas, currently teaches at IIT Bombay’s IDC (Industrial Design Centre). He also worked as an animator/designer on Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep TV series in the late 2000s. “Among all animation styles, I believe clay animation (stop-motion) is the most challenging," the 59-year-old Vyas said during an interview. “Working at Aardman Animation Studio was a dream come true. I contributed to storyboarding and animation. Since the show has no dialogue, it was a challenge to convey the story solely through visual elements. I primarily worked on ‘Go Motion’ scenes, a variation of stop-motion where elements are moved during exposure to create a motion blur effect."
“It (clay animation) demands a strong understanding of animation timing, technical expertise, and sculpting skills," Vyas said. “Above all, it requires immense patience, as the process is slow, and animators often work in physically demanding positions. Timing is crucial in animation. Each element has a distinct speed and style of motion. Sometimes, a single shot involves 20 to 25 moving elements, and achieving perfect timing is something that only comes with experience."
The Aardman stable aside, too, there have been plenty of outstanding claymation movies down the years. The Australian animator Adam Elliot has created some of the finest examples in recent times, like the 2003 short Harvie Krumpet, the 2009 feature Mary and Max, and the recently released Memoir of a Snail (2024). Notably, all of these films are tragicomedies featuring eccentric, melancholy characters informed by Elliot’s own childhood. The Czech artist and animator Jan Švankmajer’s films have received widespread acclaim around the world, including adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. 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.
In an oblique way, the ‘hand-crafted’, DIY ethos of claymation (as opposed to computer-generated images) is a running thread across Vengeance Most Fowl. Wallace’s troubles with the law begin when Feathers McGraw hacks his computer and reprograms his robots. And in one of the film’s most adorable moments, Wallace pats Gromit on the head, saying, “There’s some things a machine just can’t do, eh, lad?" (Wallace had previously tried to automate the act of petting his dog). Claymation fans would agree.
Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based writer.
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