Nick Park Quotations

The nice thing about animation is that you can realise your inventions without understanding all the hard theory.

I went back over the sketch books I'd filled at Sheffield for ideas and discovered Wallace and Gromit, except Gromit was a cat then. I made them into Plasticene shapes and started 'A Grand Day Out.' It took me longer than I expected.

We can do things that we never could before. Stop-motion lets you build tiny little worlds, and computers make that world even more believable.

When I was a teenager, my dad watched my films and told me I could go to art college and study animation. He made me see that I could do this for a living.

Gromit was the name of a cat. When I started modeling the cat I just didn't feel it was quite right, so I made it into a dog because he could have a bigger nose and bigger, longer legs.

If you respect the audience enough, they can take onboard many things.

Americans like the British kind of quirkiness and the strange accent. They find it kind of cute or something, with a certain charm.

After studying in Sheffield, I went down to London to do my post-graduate degree at the National Film and Television School, embarking on the movie that would eventually become 'A Grand Day Out.

I'm always there at home thinking of Wallace and Gromit ideas.

But I think people see 'Wallace and Gromit' as something akin to an elderly couple. These two know each other so well. Nothing can split them apart.

My father, an architectural photographer, was an incurable tinkerer, maker and mender.

I have to admit to not being the greatest technician, but stop motion animation gives me licence to create machines that wouldn't otherwise be possible - inventions that seem real and actually work.

My colleagues and I have to constantly remind each other that we must keep our own view on the world while making films. With 'Chicken Run,' we learned how easy it is to be influenced by outside forces, but you mustn't lose the heart and soul of what you are doing.

We have to look forward and keep filming new films and not get stuck in the past.

When we first sold the Wallace and Gromit shorts to America, people suggested we get rid of the strange British accents and put clear American voices on them, and we held out.

I always considered Ray Harryhausen's work so fine that it was way out of my league: in terms of realism and naturalism, in terms of animal movement.

There is something about the Australian psyche that seems to like films that are slightly offbeat.

Get out and make films. There are so many cameras now to suit any budget, so there are no excuses.

I used to get in trouble at school for day-dreaming.

There is no worse situation to be in than Oscar night. Not knowing whether you've won is completely draining.

As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head.

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay.

It's very hard to adapt something. You end up changing it too much to make a good movie out of it. I prefer to work with things that are custom made for my kind of animation.

Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.

Mainstream animated movies are dumbed-down and sanitised: they make the world in their own image rather than exploring the limitless possibilities that are out there.

My dream was to draw for 'The Beano.' When I was 10 years old, I started drawing cartoon strips with 'The Beano' in mind. I lived in that world. You own a comic, it's yours and adults don't understand it. You could pile them up under the bed, and if you were off school ill, you'd go through them all.

Success brings with it pressure to conform. I always thought that success would lead to freedom, but the opposite is true: more people get involved, and committees make decisions, and it becomes a fight to stay free.

Wallace and Gromit's contraptions are created purely for gags, but we all have the urge to invent - especially children. If they're bored, kids will make something from cardboard boxes, yoghurt pots, tape and elastic bands. Often, those constructions are the best.

With some CGI, I think the brain slightly perceives that things aren't real. There's no gravity, the light's not quite real, the shadows aren't quite real.

We were aware that we were going more global this time, but we didn't want to change anything so it kept its individual, British, small-budget feel.

This rabbit is really a vicious monster. He doesn't eat people, but instead saves his dirty work for vegetables. In many ways, we're the world's first vegetarian horror movie.

There are things that have gone -- sets and props from The Wrong Trousers.

He was concerned about how the British accents would translate, and sometimes we rerecorded lines to make things clearer,

It can only be a good thing from my point of view. With all the kind of movement toward computer animation and as great as many of those films are, there's more people who have been employed in stop-motion animation in the last year than ever before.

I think it's because Lady Tottington and Victor are aristocrats,

I think they certainly will be after this weekend.

We're both absolutely delighted. We're over the moon.

With the success of three half-hour shows behind us, it seemed a natural step to go for a feature film,

We could have done the Were-Rabbit in CGI. But we chose not to because I find with traditional (stop-motion) techniques and clay there is a certain magic that happens whenever the frame is hand-manipulated. I just love clay; it's an expression.

We actually provided a clay bunny, and he was scanned into a computer, fingerprints and all, ... And then he was cloned many times so they could show them all floating around inside the glass chamber in slow motion.

Yeah! For me, it's a dream come true just to be taken seriously, in a sense.

When I watched the film yesterday, I found it hard to relax. It was great to hear the reaction of the audience on the one hand, and that was such a relief, but on the other hand I was still trying to make the film, trying to do different edits.

But I was nervous for a long time. I was a bit cautious because many things haven't worked that go from TV to movies, and I wanted it to be an idea that really grabbed me and demanded to be made because it has to be something you really believe in 100 per cent, otherwise it can't sustain you for that long.

You have to kind of let it go,

We chatted about different movies we loved, the aspects of characters,

We didn't know each other were going to wear these ties. It's a bit of an embarrassment.

The word 'soon' is probably not applicable here, though. You may have to wait a few years.

an Impressionist painting where you can see the brush strokes. It's part of the aesthetic.

Any Hollywood studio, if they're doing a deal with somebody else, wants to own characters, but we have managed to keep hold of them.

The cab driver must have been a big fan.

You need to find things like having your actors move 2 inches in a day pretty exciting.

There was great news that it had risen to number one but at the same time the awful news that all the history, all the archives, sets and models had been lost in the fire.

It's essentially the same as it's ever been,

It's a real kind of love without being all sloppy and sentimental, which I think people can kind of relate to as the more truer family thing. There's a long-suffering-ness about it.

It's all just some kind of sentimental kind of nostalgic stuff, so in the context of world disasters at the moment, the way people are suffering, it's not any great deal, really.

It's not just a product of today, of some commercial marketing mind. He just came off the top of my head as a student and hasn't changed since.

For me I'm just drawing on my roots,

It's Saran Wrap. You pull it and twist it, and it looks like trickling water.

I wanted to keep my signature in it and not lose that.

They came to us because they love what we do, and the way we do it,

This is just ridiculous, to be up against some of the other directors here tonight.

Anyone who does it has to be a bit insane,

At the end of the week, we have perhaps two minutes done.

I love the tactile nature ... The fact that you're working with real materials. That's what turned me on at college. Making all the props and creating a little world that you can see for real.

In many ways, I thought of them as an elderly couple, ... They're inseparable, they live in each other's pockets. There's a kind of love-hate relationship, but they'll always look out for each other at the end of the day.

In many ways, I thought of them as an elderly couple,

In light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal.

I had the idea in a pub in Bristol.

If you didn't put that level of detail in, you'd actually miss it, ... You'd know it was fudged. The film had to be made so that you try and think of something comical that you'll see on the DVD one day.

I do see family resemblances, I think that happens automatically, ... But sometimes I wonder if they're two sides of myself, really. Gromit is the kind one who's quiet and likes order and is very cautious about everything, and Wallace is the one who just wants to get up and do things without thinking.

I think we all have a Wallace and Gromit inside us. Wallace is the part that has wild plans. Gromit is the sensible side, reining you in.

The clay figures don't keep well. They do keep for a year or two, and then the clay cracks up and falls off the skeleton. I guess they could demand a facelift.