Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park remembers Pixar and Toy Story temporarily posing a threat to the world of stop-motion animation.

Toy Story changed it all in the animation game. As the first entirely computer-generated feature, it meant that studios were going to have to up their game. Take a look at the highest-grossing animated films ever and the top 50 maybe has three, all of them from the Disney Renaissance. So it’s an understatement to say that Toy Story (and Pixar) is the chief reason. But if you thought traditional animation was threatened, what about stop-motion? Nick Park – creator of the Wallace & Gromit series – remembers that it put him and his studio on high alert.

Nick Park – a key player at Aardman Animations – recalled that Pixar’s rise in the animation world was a moment of reckoning for both himself and the artform in which he cultivated. As he told Inverse, “Back when Toy Story first came out in the ’90s, a studio like us, we’re thinking, ‘Oh, boy, how long do we have left?’” So what did Nick Park and company do? They pressed on, refusing to let new technology have a say in their storytelling. “But we kept going. As long as you’re telling good stories, compelling stories with compelling characters, then it’s just the technique really.”

Thanks to Toy Story – which was given a Special Achievement Academy Award, a rarity for an animated film – and the influx of (computer-)animated features in the industry, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002. Just a few years later, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit won as the first stop-motion film to do so, although it wasn’t competing against Pixar. (Interestingly, it did have another stop-motion film, Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride, up for the award.) However, with Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl likely to get a nomination this year, it will put it in direct contention with Inside Out 2…although my money is on Latvia’s Flow taking home the Oscar.

Now, we’re not trying to pit one against the other, but we have to point out that Nick Park is one of the most crucial voices in ensuring that stop-motion animation isn’t forgotten, even as technology and artificial intelligence develops. With that – and Vengeance Most Fowl being one of the best films of 2024 (read our 9/10 review here) – a lot of people are pulling for another stop-motion victory at the Oscars.