With stop-motion puppetry taking two of this year’s three Academy Award nominations for animated features, “Wallace & Gromit” creator Nick Park is ready to gloat.
“Claymation is the future,” he said with a laugh. “This computer-generated stuff – I give it about five years, tops.”
No one would ever believe Park, of course. He’s far too polite and humble to gloat about anything, even the Oscar nomination for “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” out on DVD this week ($19.95).
Besides, Park’s next feature will be computer-generated animation, another British creation involving lots of rain and sewer water called “Flushed Away.” For the moment, Park is giving up the plasticine figures of Wallace & Gromit for the computer screen. He’s no Luddite snob.
“I think we see it as whatever is appropriate for whatever we want to achieve,” said Park, noting that he and co-director Steve Box used computers to make bunnies float in the air for “Were-Rabbit.”
“We use it all the time, especially for effects, like smoke or fog or water, even fire. It’s just another useful tool.”
But Park, in a phone interview, admits gratification at the success of both “Were-Rabbit” and Tim Burton’s puppet masterpiece “The Corpse Bride,” also nominated this year. The third potential Oscar slot went to “Howl’s Moving Castle,” also non-computerized, by the hand drawing studio of Hayao Miyazaki.
People respond to the pain-staking work of animating tiny models, said Box.
“It really does look handmade,” Box said. “It’s still lovely to have a piece of furniture that’s handmade. It’s really important to us to keep fingerprints on the puppets. It’s not by accident at all. I think it feels like you could do it yourself, almost.”
Almost, indeed. The DVD version of “Were-Rabbit” is crammed with great extras showing just how difficult the claymation business can be. Animators are lucky to average five seconds of film each week. One artist did nothing for years but construct tiny garden vegetables.
The DVD also includes interviews with the inimitable voice of Wallace, Peter Sallis, and Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, the stars who made “Were-Rabbit” distinctive.
One of the DVD’s pleasures is to watch the reserved, intellectual Fiennes squirm in his seat during the interview, then hear his bellowing, shameless voice for Victor Quartermaine in the movie.
“He put so much energy into it,” Park said. “To get an A-list classical actor to say, ‘What, ho! My love!’ He was brilliant. I think people were really surprised he could pull that out of himself.”
Bonham Carter enjoyed some sort of weird first this year: She was the main female voice in two animated nominees – also giving life to the dead bride in Burton’s film.
“I’m just wondering which way Helena’s going to be voting,” said Park, who is not above sending gift baskets of Wensleydale and Camembert to sway votes.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
