Wallace - the eccentric, cheese-loving inventor

Wallace built a space rocket in his back garden and blasted-off to planet geo-cache, in search of cheese. A malfunction with the waste disposal unit, has separated him from his faithful dog, Gromit, who is lost somewhere in the UK. Without the real brains behind the partnership, the naive, somewhat inept Wallace needs your help. His mission is to move from cache to cache and be photographed in every county within the UK. Only once he has a full scrapbook of photographs, can he feed this information into his latest wacky gadget (the ex-NASA GPS Tracking Box) and find his faithful dog, Gromit.

Nick Park joined Aardman in 1986 to work at the studio with Peter Lord and David Sproxton and at the same time to complete A Grand Day Out, a film he had started while a student at the National Film and Television School. Nominated for an Academy Award, A Grand Day Out (1989) introduced the world to Wallace, the eccentric, cheese-loving inventor and his faithful dog, Gromit.

The success of A Grand Day Out demanded a sequel, and in 1993 Wallace and Gromit returned in The Wrong Trousers, followed two years later by A Close Shave, all three films having been commissioned by Colin Rose of the BBC. Park's films work on many levels. Children respond to the broad character comedy, adults to the more sophisticated elements including the affectionate spoofing of movie genres such as horror films, thrillers, heist pictures, action movies and the deep shadows and crazy camera angles of film noir. This richness of character and relentlessly paced animation (the model train chase in The Wrong Trousers and the motorbike pursuit in A Close Shave) have carried clay animation to unprecedented heights.