How Aardman made Wallace & Gromit’s Silent Villain work

Stop-motion animation is a challenging enough prospect for any studio, even Aardman, that has been pioneered the form for decades at this point. But what happens when you decide to bring back a villain who is famous for not being able to say a single word, can barely move any part of his face, and mostly remembers standing and blinking?

“It was one of the most challenging aspects really, of the whole movie,” Nick Park said recently. Reverse about the decision of bring back Feathers McGrawthe villain of Wallace and Gromitthe second TV release, The wrong pantsdecades later for Vengeance Most Fowlnow streaming worldwide on Netflix. “At least Gromit has an eyebrow he can raise. He can understand thoughts more clearly. It’s all about the simplicity of how Feathers moves, the deliberate, small movements. A glance here, a beat. Minimalism, really.”

As Park explained, Wallace and Gromit is no stranger to silent characters, given that the titular second half of the duo is a dog that cannot speak. But Gromit is still surprisingly articulated: his ears can move, his eyes are similar to any other human characters, he can move different parts of his face, and he has full hands, feet, and even a neck to transform his body and expression his emotions clear to the audience. Piume, on the other hand, is a tiny stylized penguin (occasionally disguised as a rooster). His eyes are tiny pearls, his whole body is shaped like a bottle. If Feathers wants to use body language, he has his fins, which are restricted in their ways, and then he moves his whole body at once. However, in both Wrong pants and Vengeance Most Fowlremains very charming, sometimes sinister, and always completely communicable to the audience.

Although more than three decades have passed between their screen appearances, Park’s techniques (and now his Vengeance Most Fowl co-director, Merlin Crossingham) made Feathers “feel” like any other character in Wallace and Gromit they remained the same. “We use camera movements, sound,” Crossingham explained. “He’s a very cinematic character because we rely, as directors, on all those tricks to make him the hero/villain that you see and love to hate.”

The more things change, the more some things stay the same. But for Wallace and Gromitand Aardman more generally, speaks to the timelessness of the craft involved in this kind of traditional hand-drawn animation. “The time when Toy Story The first one came out in the ’90s, a study like us, we thought, “Oh, boy, how much time is left?” “Park concluded. “But we continued. As long as you tell good stories, compelling stories with compelling characters, then it’s just technique really. All these years later, Feathers remains as compelling as ever, and still to those same cinematic tricks.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is now streaming on Netflix.

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