![]() It was not, however, a time machine or a submarine that finally transported my imagination but the Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera my dad bought my mum for her birthday. I wanted to fashion my old motors and switches into machines which would spirit me to mysterious worlds as they did in HG Wells’s The Time Machine and the Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. Hovercraft and go-carts were all well and good, but I hankered after adventure far beyond Preston and North Wales. Perhaps that was in my mind when Wallace created the Hover Wellies, perfect for land, water, snow, ice and puddles. My brother and I planned a hovercraft using fans and an inflatable rubber ring, but it never got far beyond the drawing board. Of course, it’s only his own labour that is saved, usually at Gromit’s expense. His mind races to dream up ever more sophisticated labour-saving devices, operated by a button or lever. It’s that spirit of British amateur inventiveness and do-it-yourself pluck that the Wallace and Gromit stories seek to recreate – the (probably mistaken) idea that everyday life can be improved by the wonders of modern science, preferably undertaken in a cellar or shed with a large dollop of Beano-style humour.Ī Grand Day Out only had the one invention – the rocket – but as Wallace rose to international stardom so his contraptions became more ambitious. Wallace’s rocket, designed to fetch cheese from the moon, also benefited from homely furniture and tasteful wallpaper. Years later, when I constructed the Rocket for A Grand Day Out – the first Wallace and Gromit film – I realised suddenly that I’d made a movie about my dad. Wallace and Gromit in a scene from A Grand Day out, the first of their four animated adventuresįor us, this was a splendid adventure, building our own transport and taking it on holiday. Indeed, it was only in later life that we discovered most family getaways do not include compulsory vehicle repair. Inevitably we would break down, leaving me and my four siblings sitting at the roadside as our father Roger wrestled with whichever recalcitrant engine component had failed us.įor us, motor maintenance was as much part of a holiday as cloudy skies and ice-cream. Our spirits were high, but the journey was far from smooth. As school broke up and the sun emerged, my family would depart our Lancashire home in an ancient Land Rover or beaten-up Ford van to go camping in North Wales. It was the same routine every summer in the Sixties. Scroll down to watch exclusive video of Nick Park's first ever animated film.Here, he reveals the childhood influences that led to the birth of Wallace and Gromit and for the first time unveils his first ever animated film, Walter The Rat Goes Fishing. ![]() Their creator, Nick Park, has received endless accolades for his four animated short films following the duo's hilarious escapades. Loved by the nation, animated characters Wallace and Gromit have become household names.
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