Cracking Contraptions
Encyclopedia
Wallace and Gromit's Cracking Contraptions are a series of ten Wallace and Gromit
stop motion
animation
s varying in length from 1 to 3 minutes. Each episode features one of Wallace's new inventions and Gromit's skeptical reaction to it. The series was produced and released in 2002 by Aardman Animations
.
throughout the Christmas period in 2002. They were subsequently released on a limited-edition BBC
VHS
and Region 2 DVD
. The series was also included as a bonus feature on the DVD release of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
, and can be found on the Wal-Mart
exclusive DVD, "Gromit's Tail-Waggin' DVD", packaged with "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit". All ten episodes were later aired as a 25 minute compilation on BBC Three during Christmas 2008, shortly before The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit premiered on BBC One.
Episodes first appeared on the Internet
at Atom Films
: Soccamatic for free viewing 15 October 2002, and the entire series for paid subscribers 21 October 2002-July, 2003. Starting April 2003 Microsoft sponsored free viewing of individual episodes, one per week. Christmas Cardomatic was viewable free in December 2003.
The series is now available free online at the official Wallace and Gromit website, and the Aardman YouTube channel ("aardman").
instead. Wallace in the end hit a ball into Gromit's inflated vest, attempting to burst it but it did nothing, bounced and Wallace yelled "Ha-ha, 15 love!".
Competition", Gromit builds a snow sculpture on "The Thinker". Wallace then pulls up in the Snowmanotron (a snowplow-like machine). The machine creates a snowman, but when the door of it opens it destroys Gromit's more artistic sculpture. Wallace's entry turns out to be rather crude and Gromit feeling flat heads back in. The door slam shakes some snow off the roof that lands on Wallace. Having heard the noise but not Wallace who is calling him for help inside the snowman, Gromit emerges from the house again. Discovering what he thinks is a better snowman, he adds the eyes and nose. Gromit wins the competition and was featured in the news while Wallace slowly defrosts from his frozen state.
to bring it in, but Shaun begins eating the cheese instead. Wallace keeps calling Gromit, who is still at the basement, to stop Shaun, but Gromit ignored him while Shaun happily munched away on the cheese.
and soon falls asleep, but the mechanism continues to bounce Gromit up and down the whole night.
. He then activates his Bully Proof Vest, a box on his chest with a boxing-glove on a spring that shoots Gromit across the room and through a door. After seeing his invention worked he starts to leave but trips on the rolling pin and falls. The button for the invention hits the floor, activating it again and shooting Wallace vertically into the ceiling, where he is pinned to and stuck.
with sharp metal teeth and it sucks up things really fast. However it goes after his crackers, but Wallace pulls the box of it out of its mouth breaking it in two. Wallace tries to stop the 525 Crackervac from getting at another cracker. But Gromit lassos the machine, which flings him onto its back and sending it out of control. He ties its neck and then its bag bursts, causing Wallace (and the area where he is sitting) to get covered with dust.
Wallace and Gromit
Wallace and Gromit are the main characters in a series consisting of four British animated short films and a feature-length film by Nick Park of Aardman Animations...
stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
s varying in length from 1 to 3 minutes. Each episode features one of Wallace's new inventions and Gromit's skeptical reaction to it. The series was produced and released in 2002 by Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit...
.
Releases
Episodes were broadcast individually on BBC OneBBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
throughout the Christmas period in 2002. They were subsequently released on a limited-edition BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
and Region 2 DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
. The series was also included as a bonus feature on the DVD release of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a 2005 British clay-mation animated comedy horror film, the first feature-length Wallace and Gromit film. It was produced by DreamWorks Animation and Aardman Animations, and released by DreamWorksPictures...
, and can be found on the Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
exclusive DVD, "Gromit's Tail-Waggin' DVD", packaged with "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit". All ten episodes were later aired as a 25 minute compilation on BBC Three during Christmas 2008, shortly before The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit premiered on BBC One.
Episodes first appeared on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
at Atom Films
Atom Films
Atom.com is a broadband entertainment network offering original short subject films, animations, and series by independent creators...
: Soccamatic for free viewing 15 October 2002, and the entire series for paid subscribers 21 October 2002-July, 2003. Starting April 2003 Microsoft sponsored free viewing of individual episodes, one per week. Christmas Cardomatic was viewable free in December 2003.
The series is now available free online at the official Wallace and Gromit website, and the Aardman YouTube channel ("aardman").
The Soccamatic
Wallace and Gromit head to the local football field for a bit of practice, with Wallace kicking and Gromit playing goalie. Realizing how skillful Gromit is at blocking shots, Wallace activates his Soccamatic - a machine that repeatedly launches balls toward the goal, previously owned by a fictional soccer team in 1936 (The year the contraption was made was even on the machine.). Gromit ducks as the balls fly past. The machine runs out of balls, but Wallace re-loads it via an overhead mechanism that dumps the balls in. Meanwhile Gromit has pulled on gloves and pilot gear. Pulling a cord, he inflates his goalkeeper vest and gloves. This completely blocks the goal, enabling the balls to bounce off and prompting Wallace to suggest that they play tennisTennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
instead. Wallace in the end hit a ball into Gromit's inflated vest, attempting to burst it but it did nothing, bounced and Wallace yelled "Ha-ha, 15 love!".
The Tellyscope
To try activating his TV automatically without getting up and sharing with Gromit a new contraption he invented, Wallace activates his Tellyscope which shoots a tennis ball into the wall turning gears and cogs activating the TV. Wallace selects a channel and expects the channel on cheese ("The Cheese Files") to come on. Instead a different channel comes on relating to the penguin criminals ("When Penguins Turn"). Having run out of the tennis balls he tries using the TV remote which Gromit handed over to, but its size and shape destroys the system sending the TV to shoot across the room and into Wallace, pinning him to the wall.A Christmas Cardomatic
It is almost Christmas and Wallace tries working on his Christmas Cardomatic by taking pictures of Gromit in a giant robin costume. His machine works but the fake scene painted on the curtains does not match as well to the real scene outside.The Autochef
To speed up his cooking, Wallace activates the Auto Chef, a robot chef with a tea nozzle, a frying pan and a temperature gauge. Wallace tries serving scrambled eggs, but they end up landing on Gromit's head. Wallace tries serving fried eggs, but the eggs are shot at Wallace's face blinding him. The Auto Chef starts going out of control so Gromit blocks the tea nozzle tea is squirting from with his banana. The Auto Chef's head explodes off its body (after it comically says the word "knickers").The Snowmanotron
To try and win the annual "SnowmanSnowman
A snowman is an anthropomorphic snow sculpture. They are customarily built by children as part of a family project in celebration of winter. In some cases, participants in winter festivals will build large numbers of snowmen...
Competition", Gromit builds a snow sculpture on "The Thinker". Wallace then pulls up in the Snowmanotron (a snowplow-like machine). The machine creates a snowman, but when the door of it opens it destroys Gromit's more artistic sculpture. Wallace's entry turns out to be rather crude and Gromit feeling flat heads back in. The door slam shakes some snow off the roof that lands on Wallace. Having heard the noise but not Wallace who is calling him for help inside the snowman, Gromit emerges from the house again. Discovering what he thinks is a better snowman, he adds the eyes and nose. Gromit wins the competition and was featured in the news while Wallace slowly defrosts from his frozen state.
Shopper 13
To speed up the task of bringing cheese home from the shop, Wallace deploys Shopper 13, a remote-controlled trolley equipped with a camera and accessories to retrieve/carry items. Though it successfully picks up the largest wheel of Edam in the shop Wallace frequently patronises, the weight causes one wheel to fall off. Gromit guides it to grab a loaf of French bread, which it uses as a cane to limp home. The other wheel comes off at the front walk, destroying the robot and in the process, dumps the Edam in the garden. Wallace sends out Shaun the SheepShaun the Sheep
Shaun the Sheep is a British stop-motion animated children's television series produced by Aardman Animations, and commissioned by the BBC and the WDR. It first aired in the UK on CBBC in March 2007...
to bring it in, but Shaun begins eating the cheese instead. Wallace keeps calling Gromit, who is still at the basement, to stop Shaun, but Gromit ignored him while Shaun happily munched away on the cheese.
The Snoozatron
Wallace is unable to sleep having eaten too much cheese, so he activates his Snoozatron to remedy the problem. Gromit puts on a sheep costume and heads downstairs as grabber arms place a teddy bear and water bottle on Wallace's bed. After Gromit reaches the dining room, a huge spring built into the floor repeatedly bounces him upward, through a trap door in the ceiling, and into Wallace's bedroom. Wallace literally counts sheepCounting sheep
Counting sheep is a mental exercise used in some cultures as a means of lulling oneself to sleep.In most depictions of the activity, the practitioner envisions an endless series of identical white sheep jumping over a fence, while counting them as they do so...
and soon falls asleep, but the mechanism continues to bounce Gromit up and down the whole night.
The Turbo Diner
While trying to repair the Auto Chef, Wallace tries a new replacement contraption. To help speed up Gromit's chores of preparing the table, Wallace activates the Turbo Diner, a machine that operates with coin usage. Various parts clean the table, clamp Wallace and Gromit's hands and legs onto the chair arms and legs and light the candles. But then the meter runs out of coins (as Wallace inserted a 10-pence inside, giving the machine 10 seconds to work only). The table and meter are too far away for either Wallace or Gromit to reach because of the wrist and thigh clamps. Eventually the candles go out, leaving them in darkness and stuck forever.The Bully-Proof Vest
It is a dark and stormy night, so Wallace is nervous about the sounds outside. While bringing out his tea, he does not notice the strange figure (actually Gromit in a black fleece costume and beret) lurking in the shadows. When a cracker is taken from his hand, he discovers it in a dark corner and then discovers Gromit making ninja moves with a rolling pinRolling pin
thumb|A wooden "roller" type rolling pinA rolling pin is a cylindrical food preparation utensil used to shape and flatten dough. Two styles of rolling pins are found; roller and rods. Roller types consists of a thick cylindrical roller with small handles at each end; rod type rolling pins are...
. He then activates his Bully Proof Vest, a box on his chest with a boxing-glove on a spring that shoots Gromit across the room and through a door. After seeing his invention worked he starts to leave but trips on the rolling pin and falls. The button for the invention hits the floor, activating it again and shooting Wallace vertically into the ceiling, where he is pinned to and stuck.
The 525 Crackervac
To speed up Gromit's chores of sweeping up, Wallace activates the 525 Crackervac, a vacuum cleanerVacuum cleaner
A vacuum cleaner, commonly referred to as a "vacuum," is a device that uses an air pump to create a partial vacuum to suck up dust and dirt, usually from floors, and optionally from other surfaces as well. The dirt is collected by either a dustbag or a cyclone for later disposal...
with sharp metal teeth and it sucks up things really fast. However it goes after his crackers, but Wallace pulls the box of it out of its mouth breaking it in two. Wallace tries to stop the 525 Crackervac from getting at another cracker. But Gromit lassos the machine, which flings him onto its back and sending it out of control. He ties its neck and then its bag bursts, causing Wallace (and the area where he is sitting) to get covered with dust.