An English inventor who loves cheese. A dog who stumbles into misadventures. Wallace and Gromit are back.  

Do you know these characters? Animator Nick Park introduced them in his 1989 short film A Grand Day Out. Since then, they’ve appeared in feature films, commercials, and even video games. But they haven’t had a big movie for the last 20 years. And that makes sense. Their filmmakers use a technique called claymation. Claymation takes a long, long, looooong time to produce. 

Claymation is a form of stop-motion animation. Other types of animation use drawings or computer models. Stop-motion uses actual photos. Creators animate everything from LEGO minifigures to fruits and vegetables. Mr. Park and his co-director, Merlin Crossingham, use clay figurines. Underneath the clay, the figures have movable metal skeletons. Artists pose the figures again and again—snapping pictures between moves—until a whole movie is made.  

The world of animation has changed since 1989. Today, computer animation rules. But Mr. Park and Mr. Crossingham bring back an old-school style. Fans flocked to their small screens to stream the latest film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, starting in December 2024.  

In the newest movie, Wallace invents a robot garden gnome he calls “Norbot.” He makes Norbot perform household tasks. Gromit isn’t happy when Norbot takes over his garden. Things get worse when the villain, Feathers McGraw, hacks into the Norbot to steal from Wallace’s neighbors. That’s quite a plot to work out one tiny movement at a time. 

“In a good week, we might hit a minute of film,” Mr. Park told BBC. 

No wonder the new movie took so long to arrive! 

Why? There’s no substitute for hands-on hard work, patience, and skill—even when modern technology offers easier paths.