Interview
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To mark the return of Wallace and Gromit, the directors, Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, look back on their unique way of animating their plasticine characters by hand.
It’s Tintin and Snowy lost in a Parisian palace. Come to ensure, at the end of November, the anticipated promotion of the new film Wallace & Gromit, directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham are physically amusing. It’s impossible not to think of Hergé’s journalist when seeing Crossingham, as the silhouette, the freckles and the powder puff are so identical. Joining the Aardman studio in 1996, the forty-something rose through the ranks, from key animator to assistant director, before being entrusted with the direction of the formidable series Creature Comforts. In charge of the destiny of Wallace and Gromit since the early 2000s, Crossingham is co-directing the return of the duo with Nick Park, their creator. Today a 66 year old grandpa, with white hair and beard. Twenty years since we last saw the most British tandem in stop-motion animation, since the Were-Rabbit in 2005. A comeback that comes at the right time for Aardman, in turmoil. Owned by its employees, the British studio has gone through several complicated exercises (rising prices, falling budgets allocated to animation, and an unprofitable 3D series) to the point of having to lay off around twenty of its 120 employees in 2024.
By rewatching the first short films of Wallace et Gromit before looking at Palme from
