Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Animator best known for creating Wallace and Gromit, and for winning multiple Oscars including for Creature Comforts.
On the island
Eight records
Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
I remember it it had disco was in the seventies and it seemed so timeless.
I was animating a scene of a very sad scene of Gromit leaving home and being with his tears welling up in his eyes. ... As an animator you are really an actor, you're taking on the character in your own body and you sort of have to somehow imbue character into the clay. And so I used to listen to this record to just get myself into a sad state of mind, to get myself in into Gromitz state of mind, basically.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Um well it really reminds me of my um National Film School student days in London. This was in the charts around them. I love songs with great lyrics and he's just one of those he's a poet, you know, he's a very clever songwriter.
I love that rawness that they have. I like w I like when songs have double meanings and you know it's kind of a love song, but it's also got a kind of spiritual element as well.
Oh yeah. Uh this next one is one of my favourite comedians really uh and writes very funny songs.
I find it kind of intoxicating, the the poetry. I'm I'm just amazed by the power of uh of words.
I Forgot That Love ExistedFavourite
Actually probably one of the artists I listen to the most in the car is Van Morrison, and I just love this song. I love the album Poetic Champions Compose
This is um A song by Joe Rose, he's the son of some very good friends of mine in Sheffield, artists in Sheffield that I was at art school with, and their son I think is a very talented, inspirational young songwriter in Sheffield.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:23You've been called Preston's answer to Walt Disney. Do you have any plans for a Wallace and Gromit theme park?
At the moment in discussions with uh a theme park. We are um in the middle of discussions with uh Blackpool Pleasure Beach about a Wallace and Grommet ride, yeah.
Presenter asks
6:33You were one of five children. Were you creating a nice quiet corner for yourself in the house by going up into the attic?
I probably was. I mean, the the house was always very busy. I was the middle one of five children. My mother tells me I I was the quietest one, and I I spoke very late because I think my older brothers used to speak for me and uh but I always felt, I guess, like the invisible one. I was told as well that I used to if even though I was quiet, I would observe people and I would go and draw. I loved drawing, and I could sit on my own quietly and draw for hours. I loved being in my own world.
Presenter asks
10:35Was there a touch of the amateur inventor about your father?
Uh yeah, there was very much actually. In fact, um after making A Grand Day Out, you know, where Wallace builds a a this rocket in the basement of his house, I remember thinking after I've made that that I've actually made a film about my dad,'cause I remember we bought this old decrepit, like, nineteen sixties caravan from someone for about ten pounds, and we got it home and my my parents stripped it down to the chassis and built this kind of wooden box on it, which was a caravan with uh wallpaper inside and bunk beds and lots of things that fold out and and it was a little home from home really that seven of us went on holiday to North Wales in.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
14:57How do you capture the spirit and personality in little plasticine figures?
Yes, well on on one level, every model maker I work with you could they often can be accused of making models look like themselves. ... I can tell if Pete's animated Morph, or I can tell if one of the other animators is animated, because it takes on their personality.
Presenter asks
23:02Were you filled with trepidation at the thought of working with big Hollywood players [like DreamWorks]?
Um yeah, absolutely. I mean I'm constantly kind of in awe really of how things have gone, you know, from playing with plasticine at home. And that's what I still feel I'm kind of doing really. ... I was with a close shave out at the Sundance Festival and got a call from Steven Spielberg's company, from Geoffrey Katzenberg, um Stephen Spielberg's partner. And he sent his private jet to pick up, you know, me and my colleagues and fly us out to LA for a meeting just for one evening.
“I've never felt I have to kind of get out there and sell myself and, you know, big myself up and It's nice that the work speaks for itself, you know I hope.”
“I was actually planning to give Gromit a mouth, and I found it so difficult to change his mouth that I just moved his brow up and down. And it was in that moment, out of economy or laziness, I don't know, but suddenly his character was born, and I realized he could say everything.”
“I think I said something like. Oh, I shouldn't eat all this chocolate. It was it was Easter next week and I said, M oh, my mother will probably be making loads of things like this and I shouldn't really eat them. And then anyway, I had this kind of half-hour long conversation with her, which was really int she was very switched on and talking about theatre and films and and I wasn't wanting to stuff my face. So I think she must have thought that I wasn't liking the pudding. So she called the waiter and said, Could you take this away, please? His mother says he shouldn't eat it.”