Wallace and Gromit make way for sewer rats

The animation studio behind Wallace and Gromit has ditched its much-loved trademark clay models for its next film.

UK-based Aardman Animations is using computer graphics to create Flushed Away, which follows the lives of London’s rats in their sewer home.

But the creators of stop-motion hits like 2000’s Chicken Run and last year’s Curse of the Were-Rabbit say it has not abandoned the painstaking process of using the Plasticine figures for good.

Flushed Away is Aardman’s third picture in a five-movie deal with American film giant Dreamworks and its first to use computer graphics.

Co-director Sam Fell said they had worked hard however to make sure it did not look unrecognisably slick, and had “Aardman-ised” the characters.

“They have wide smiles, round edges and spherical eyes close together,” he told USA Today.

“We did not want to become this shiny, colourful thing like CGI [computer generated imagery] movies are.

“We scruffed up the film and added wonky imperfections.”

An Aardman spokesman said: “We are not stopping Plasticine animation in the least.”

He said the studio had chosen to used computer graphics for its latest film “because we like them”.

“We’ve had a computer graphics department for nine years and it is firmly established,” he added.

“But Plasticine models are coming again.”