Length: 30 Minutes

Overview:

Wallace and Gromit's new window cleaning service is booming in business, especially from rare beauty and wool shop owner, Wendolene Ramsbottom and her dog Preston. When sheep invade 62 West Wallaby Street and Gromit is framed for sheep rustling, it's up to our dynamic duo to save the day and defeat one of the scariest villains ever animated!...

Very well critically acclaimed, it won the Oscar for best animated short, but some people still said it wasn't as good as The Wrong Trousers. However, it did contain breakthrough effects, as well as some new ideas. Where else would you see two plasticine characters falling in love?!

Aardman Animation's thoughts:

“Reducing the time-scale meant taking on more animators, model-makers and cameramen (the complete crew numbered 25), with a consequent increase in the budget. A Close Shave was budgeted at about £1.3 million in comparison to The Wrong Trousers' £650,000. Moreover, the new, more industrial, production process pushed Park himself into a radically different role. Instead of animating most of the key moments in the film himself, as he had previously, he was obliged to become more of a director, overseeing what the four other animators were doing. For Park this was a difficult step to take. "We make films in a very personal way," he explains, "and what concerned me was how you manage to keep that consistency of style and quality when there are many different hands at work. Also, to begin with I found it quite frustrating not doing much animation myself and it was odd seeing other people handling my ideas. I did animate the prison sequence with Gromit, and some other bits and pieces, but not much."

(C) Copyright Aardman Animations Ltd.

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