Wallace and Gromit Studio Loses History

TheFarmerInTheDell writes "CNN is reporting that the Aardman Animations building in Bristol, home of Wallace and Gromit, has been destroyed by fire From the article: 'Today was supposed to be a day of celebration, with the news that 'Wallace and Gromit' had gone in at No. 1 at the U.S. box office, but instead our whole history has been wiped out'"

Comments

I feel bad for them, but...

[settsu]

...was there no preventative measures in place to protet the irreplaceable memorabilia?!

At least it isn't GameFAQs.

[CyricZ]

Be thankful that Slashdot isn't like GameFAQs. Take a look at all of the rules they have there. Did you know that you can be banned from those forums if you use a line consisting of more than three characters to separate your posts from your signature? The rules are that fucking strict, and that fucking pointless. And as such the place is an utter shithole for true, open, thought-provoking discussion.

Now, let's be fair. At least Slashdot has a fairly public moderating system, unlike a dictatorship like GameFAQs. You can still see any and all posts that have been moderated down, unlike at GameFAQs, where they're deleted outright. At least you can say what you want here, even if it may take people browsing at -1 for it to be seen. Contrast that to GameFAQs, where once deleted your post is not seen by anyone.

The moderators themselves at GameFAQs are most likely the worst problem, secondary to the absurdly complicated and intrusive forum rules. A lone moderator can delete your posts, even on the basis of just not liking you as a person. While that can happen here to some extent, at least other moderators can come around later and fix a mistake or abuse.

Funnily enough, at GameFAQs you can contest certain moderations. Of course, your appeal goes right to the moderator who either fucked up or intentionally abused their power in the first place. So the vast majority of the time you have no recourse when you have become the victim of a rogue moderator. At least here there are other moderators who can come along and remedy the problem.

Every time that someone talks about how horrible it is here at Slashdot, I just think about GameFAQs, and how truly horrible their system is. At least here we can express some disappointment with the Slashdot system. At GameFAQs you would have most likely been banned.

Re:Not everything is lost, only a warehouse

[yali]

I don't think Nick Park would completely agree with you, but he certainly has a healthy perspective on this. From TFA:

Wallace and Gromit's creator, Nick Park, said the earthquake in South Asia helped put the loss into perspective.

"Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn't a big deal," he said.

Re:Firing clay figures

[dcuny]

Many of the characters you think of as being plasticine are actually foam latex, or a composite (ie: only the face being plasticine). For example, Morph is 100% plasticine, Wat (from "Wat's Pig) is a composite, with a more traditional foam latex body and clay hands.

(This is true with a lot of things you might consider being "clay" animation. For example, Klayman from "The Neverhood" was a foam latex character in most of the shots).

You can get more details in the Aardman book "Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation" (in the US it's labled "Creating 3-D Animation : The Aardman Book of Filmmaking"). You can see some really wonderful sets and minatures there - it's really a pity that it's been lost.

To answer someone else's question, plasticine is an oil-based clay, so it won't dry out. That also means you can't fire (harden) the material as you could with traditional clay.