Nick Park is perhaps one of the most well known British animators, and is arguably a significant figure in bringing British animated feature films to an international audience.
Park’s first feature film was the now well-known film ‘A Grand Day Out’. Started as a student project, Park sent some footage of his project to the creators of Morph, at Aardman Studios, as they too specialised in clay-mation animation. Enthusiastic about Park’s characters, Aardman hired him post-graduation and the feature was completed.
I have recently been re-watching the ‘Wallace and Gromit’ films, which get cleaner and more smooth to watch with each film. For instance, in ‘A Grand Day Out’ the finger marks on the clay are more apparent (although this arguable adds a sense of charm to earlier films).
In ‘A Close Shave’, the third of the Wallace and Gromit films, the camera angles are integral to the mood of each scene. In the opening scene, suspense and the obviousness of criminal activity are used with rear view mirror angles that hint at suspicious activity, whilst close ups are often used to give comedic effect when on the more light-hearted characters of Wallace and Gromit. Similarly, low angles are often used when displaying Gromit’s machinery to show the audience a full view of the complex machine (and also of how silly it is!)
The colours and clothing in the films tend to be quite bright, giving a light-hearted, childish and nostalgic feel, whilst the consistency of clay used for many of the props keeps the audience in the world of the protagonists.
Watching the films, it could be easily missed how expressive each character is in order to convey emotions, particularly since they lack in eyebrows! In order to get around the lack of eyebrows, the top of the characters’ foreheads move as if there were eyebrows there, sometimes even moving forward, which although is unnatural, contributes to conveying character emotions.