Wallace & Gromit and the charm of claymation

The latest gem from Aardman studio shines a light on this animation subgenre, which involves the use of clay figures and stop-motion

- Aditya Mani Jha

During a recent interview with The Independent, the English filmmaker and animator Nick Park expressed his bemusement at Feathers McGraw, the anthropomorphic chicken antagonist from his latest animated film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (released on Netflix earlier this month), becoming a hated onscreen villain.

"They think he is evil. But he is only a four-inch-tall piece of plasticine!" Park's being modest, of course, but the comment works as a tribute to the power of clay animation or 'claymation', a style of stop-motion animation wherein each figure being animated is handmade, usually out of plasticine clay. As with other forms of stop-motion, each still picture ('frame') is then recorded and played rapidly before the viewer, generally at 10-12 frames per second.

Within the world of stop-motion, claymation is considered a labour-intensive technique. There are several other stop-motion techniques where the logistics and the effort/output ratio are a bit kinder—paper-cutouts, Lego-based animation (called 'brickfilms'), 'lightbox' animation (the manipulation of light and shadow in high-contrast images). And yet, claymation maintains a significant following among animation enthusiasts because of the hand-crafted look one achieves with plasticine clay; plasticine's association with childhood and the resultant nostalgia don't hurt either.