After 20 years, Wallace & Gromit remain cultural icons, and the hand-made quality is digitally enhanced on A Matter of Loaf and Death.

BD: You must be pleased that Fabrice Joubert has a nominated short, French Roast, after working on Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

NP: Yeah, I loved his film. He was one of my favorite animators. It's funny how he was like a CG guy and came to do clay again. And he was probably one of the best Gromit animators I've had. And so it's great to see what he's doing now. I've been in touch with him and wish him all the best.

BD: I understand things are going well so far with Sony.

NP: Yeah, we're about to start our first two feature films, Arthur Christmas and Pirates! And Pete Lord is about to start shooting in March on Pirates !-- and that's our stop-frame feature film. Plus we've got Arthur Christmas as a CG feature film. And we're very busy.

BD: They tell me the idea is to "let Aardman be Aardman," so you must be pleased about that.

NP: When we met them, they just wanted us to be ourselves, and that was music to our eyes. So it's all looking good.

Bill Desowitz is Senior Editor of AWN & VFXWorld.