As the eagerly-awaited Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit opens in cinemas, AWN speaks to three of the film’s staff about bringing the world’s most beloved clay heroes to the big screen. Lloyd Price is supervising animator on the film, responsible for, in his words, “training animators in the ways of Wallace & Gromit,” as they came onto production. Chris Sadler is lead animator on the villainous Victor Quartermaine; he and Price teamed as co-directors on the Cracking Contraptions series of Wallace & Gromit shorts made in the run-up to Were-Rabbit. Finally, director of photography Dave Alex Riddett isn’t only a veteran of Aardman for two decades, but one of the original co-founders of Bristol’s neighboring “bolex brothers” studio, whose work ranges from the pixilated Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb to the CGI Magic Roundabout.

Aardman resisted the pressure to make a Hollywood movie with Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. All images courtesy DreamWorks Animation SKG © and ™ Aardman Animations Ltd.

Andrew Osmond: What are the main differences between making the earlier half-hour Wallace & Gromit films and making a feature-length adventure?

Lloyd Price (supervising animator): In the case of A Close Shave, the third of the half-hour Wallace & Gromits, Nick Park and Bob Baker pretty well wrote the script, drew the boards and we effectively shot what they had done. There were very few changes in A Close Shave — the scenes where Wallace was reading newspapers with the sheep came later, but that was about all. But when you make a feature film like Curse of the Were-Rabbit, they’re such big things and so much is riding on them that the script is in a constant state of flux. Things are being changed, ideas are being put in and taken out, and you generally end up starting work on the first act because that’s in the best shape. The third act was still in flux well into production, with little tweaks literally into the last five or six weeks of shooting. [Directors Nick Park and Steve Box did the bulk of the film story, although Bob Baker came up with the idea of a “Were-Rabbit.”] Because you’re working with a DreamWorks and they like showing parts of the film to selected audiences, there’s always pressure to adjust and change things…

Key animator Jay Grace works on one of the 33 miniature sets on the floor of Aardman’s feature studio in Bristol.

AO: How do you respond to the fans’ fear that the pressure of a Hollywood feature film will make this a less “pure,” personal animation than the previous Wallace & Gromit films?

LP: Nick insisted that he had creative control. That was incredibly important, not only to Nick but everyone at Aardman. People can look at the film from the outside and point out something and say, this is obviously an American influence, and they go on about some of the references and things like that, but they’re dead wrong — they absolutely came from Nick and how he works. The film can’t not be influenced by other things, but it’s still very much the film that Nick Park and Steve Box wanted to make — especially Nick, because he sees Wallace and Gromit as almost like his children. While Aardman was constantly bombarded with advice and ideas from DreamWorks, the criterion was it was taken on board if it was a good idea, as it would be if it came from Aardman people.

AO: Tell us about the characters in the film.

LP: Of the heroes, I think that Gromit is the deeper, more interesting character. Wallace is the one who gets into trouble, while Gromit is the one who sorts things out and gets things done. This time, he’s got to go through a whole feature without speaking, so the demands on him in terms of the range of emotions are a lot harder. You’ve really got to get inside him in his shots. You’re always reading his face, his eyes and brows and ears, the angle of his head.