San Francisco Frontiers - Say cheese! 'Wallace & Gromit' expo puts kids into motion

The British capital's biggest children's museum is giving a behind-the-scenes look at Aardman, the studio that created the popular stop-motion favourites, Shaun the Sheep and others.

Opening Thursday at the Young V&A museum in east London, "Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends" uses interactive and colourful displays to explore how the British studio's iconic clay characters are brought to life.

Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Aardman's first production and showcasing over 150 objects -- including models, sets, and storyboards from the studio's archives -- the exhibition took nearly two years to prepare, said chief curator Alex Newson.

"It's really celebrating... how those characters have survived the test of time, and if anything, are more loved today than they were when they kind of first came out," Newson told AFP.

"We really also wanted to show the process behind how they are made," said the curator, including how the creators came up with characters like the hapless, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his floppy-eared dog Gromit.

"But more than that, we wanted to use those... to inspire children to become kind of the next animators and the animators of the future."

Despite the rise of children's exposure to screen time, Newson believes "people want to make things by hand still".

"I know that in today's increasingly digital world, it's easy to create something without having to do anything. But there is a real thirst to make things, and there's also a real thirst to see things that have been made by people."

Aardman, based in Bristol in southwest England, uses the word "thumbiness" to describe how viewers can almost see the fingerprints of the people who make the puppets and scenes.

"You can understand that this was a handmade thing, and there was love, sweat and tears that have gone into the creation of it," said Newson.

- 'Beast of Mossy Bottom' -

To mark its half-century, Aardman will release a new movie later this year: "Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom".

Schoolchildren previewing the exhibition, which runs to November 15, enjoyed the interactive displays, which included a praxinoscope -- an animation device -- and character design stations.

They also saw lighting experiments on a film set from "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl", the process behind stop-motion video creation, and how animators make sound effects.

"It's very fun," said Zahre, aged eight, whose favourite character is Gromit.

Founded in 1972, Aardman began with friends Peter Lord and David Sproxton making animations together on their kitchen table while they were still at school.

The studio went on to become one of the UK's largest animation production companies, producing hits including "Chicken Run", "Shaun the Sheep", and "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", which won the 2006 Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

U.Campbell--SFF