WallaceAndGromit.net

Perhaps the worst part of being an American WnG fan is that I don’t know about things like this latest news tidbit – a group called “the International Austin A30/A35 Register (IAR)” has created a real life version of the Anti-Pesto van, which is an Austin A35. I learned about this via an email from one of the men who thought up the idea, Mark Armé:

Thought that you might be interested to know that there is an official Wallace & Gromit promotional van on the streets of the UK – the only one in the World. It is an original Austin A35 van and a perfect replica of the van seen in the film. It is the result of an exclusive collaboration between Aardman Animation and Flying-A.net, which is home to the International Austin A30/A35 Register.

That’s so cool!

You can see pictures of the original van and it’s transformation on the IAR website: http://wallaceandgromit.flying-a.net/

I opened my inbox this morning to find it overflowing with articles about the latest WnG movie news: It’ll be showing at the Toronto International Film Festival next month!

The cheese-loving Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit will have their first, full-length feature film debut at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

TIFF organizers also announced yesterday that Park, who won an Oscar in 1995 for his short, Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave, will take place in its Mavericks session, which brings cinephiles together with leading film artists.

Full Article: Wallace & Gromit at TIFF

Cool. Too bad I can’t be there for it. Will have to wait with the rest of us yanks until October 7th.

First off, I ran into a very interesting article this morning about WnG, it gets into detail about Nick Park’s association with Hollywood, some of the history of his work and Aardman and more, a great read. Check it out here: Ay up, chuck

If you haven’t been to wandg.com recently, it’s time to drop by! They now have a “Downloads” section which has desktop wallpapers (I’m using one now!), AIM icons and a screensaver for Windows and Mac. In their “Video” section you can now check out a couple of the Cracking Contraptions movies if you haven’t seen them already, as well as the making of and regular trailer for the new film. There is also now a “Valued Clients” section which gives brief bios of the main characters.

And I’ve updated the main wng movie page, and created characters page for the new movie.

Aardman revealed the first 15 minutes of the upcoming film to reporters on August 5th! Reports so far have been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s believed that they will have no trouble pulling off the feature film with the same wonder and charm as the shorts!

DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said he was amazed as he watched director Nick Park and his crew of 250 people work on the movie with “the most painstaking craftsmanship and precision. I’ve been such a fan of these shorts over the years. Nick Park and his team have such amazing creativity.”

Wallace Secrets Revealed

You can also check out DreamWorks Animation Preview where they describe the WnG sneak preview, as well as Aardman’s plans for other upcoming film, Flushed Away (Aardman’s first CGI Animated film).

June Toy emailed me yesterday to let me know that she just purchased a couple of Wesco products. Yes, they’re being sold now! You can check out their e-brocure by downloading it from here. It’s an .exe file, which will run in Windows and under wine in Linux, not sure about OSX compatibility. Enjoy!

Konami announced on the 20th that they would be the publishers of the Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit video game. Developed by Frontier, this game is set for an October release.

Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit will follow the events of the movie, in which the scatterbrained tinkerer Wallace and his loyal dog, Gromit, are called on to protect a giant vegetable contest from a beastly terror. Players must use cooperative gameplay as Wallace, Gromit, and their rabbit friend Hutch negotiate four free-roaming play areas that span the titular duo’s hometown of West Wallaby.

Gamespot.com – Konami to publish Wallace & Gromit

There are also newer screenshots of the game here

As I mentioned in a post on July 2nd, there will be a new DVD release of the shorts, as well as the first release of Cracking Contraptions on region 1 DVD. Now we have cover art!

Universal has kindly sent over official artwork for Wallace & Gromit in Three Amazing Adventures, which includes Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out, Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers and Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave. Each will be presented in 1.33:1 full frame, along with English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, and French Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono tracks. English, French and Spanish subtitles will also be included. Extras will include the cracking contraptions shorts, a sneak peak at the upcoming Wallace and Gromit movie, and more. We’ve attached our first look at the official region one package artwork… – DVDAnswers.com News: Wallace & Gromit (Region 1)

I posted a few weeks ago that they would be having a preview of the WnG video game at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival (EIEF). Now they’ve released the schedule for game screenings.

Friday 12th August

Industry legend David Braben and Rachael Carpenter (Aardman Animations) showcase their unique collaboration on ‘The Curse of The Were-Rabbit’ based on Wallace and Gromit’s new film due for release this autumn. The game sees the dynamic claymation duo pitted against the sinister Were-Rabbit and other shadowy adversaries, and allows the player to explore and interact with the locations and characters from the film.

Hopefully this demo will show up online not too soon after that, I’d be excited to see it.

I kept checking back at spawn.com for pictures of the new toys, and this morning Steven dropped me an email letting me know that the images of the new toys were up!

Check out the Wallace and Gromit Action Figures and Wallace and Gromit 3-Inch PVC Figures– Complete with larger images (Final Painted Sculpt Photos) of each toy

We’re still waiting on release of picture of the Wallace and Gromit Bean Dolls pictures, but hopefully it’ll be soon!

Thanks again Steven!

This interview is a couple months old (from May 6th 2005), but it’s still interesting. The most interesting bit to me was:

SHELDRAKE: So is Gromit EVER going to speak?

NICK: Apparently he was dubbed in Finland. We had to get them to take it off. He speaks with his eyes, with his eyebrows. He doesn’t seem to need to speak.

Gromit spoke!

And I didn’t know he got inspiration from Hammer Studios pictures either, nice.