Wallace & Gromit: the curse of the warehouse FERGUS SHEPPARD MEDIA

Key points• Fire at storage depot destroys Wallace and Gromit sets and props• Models and props from latest film unaffected• New film tops United States box office at weekend
Key quote"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." - NICK PARKS, WALLACE AND GROMIT CREATOR

Story in full THE creators of Wallace and Gromit were last night counting the cost of a devastating blaze at their storage depot which destroyed hundreds of sets and props from films including A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and Creature Comforts.
Aardman Animations said the fire, at a Victorian warehouse in Bristol used to archive sets, storyboards and models, had wiped out its 30-year history of production.
Items lost included the set of Chicken Run, Aardman's first feature-length release; several Plasticine and latex figures of Wallace; Shorn the Sheep from A Close Shave, and the Evil Penguin from The Wrong Trousers.
Also destroyed were the Plasticine figures of the animals in Creature Comforts, including Frank the tortoise, Fluffy the hamster, Pickles the dog and Terry the octopus.
However, the well-known rocket from A Grand Day Out was spared, as it had been on display at the company's studio, while models and props from Aardman's latest feature, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, were kept at the company's Bristol studios and were unaffected.
Ironically, the fire came after an opening weekend in which the new film topped the United States box office, taking more than £9 million.
Wallace and Gromit's creator, Nick Park, was philosophical as fire crews continued to damp down the storage building close to Bristol Temple Meads station, saying the fire was "no big deal" compared with the earthquake in Pakistan. "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.
The props and other equipment kept in the warehouse had been used for tours and exhibitions to feed the intense public interest in how Aardman's unique productions are made.
The production archive lost in the fire dates back to the late 1970s, and the days of the pioneering Morph character who became a big hit on the BBC children's art series Take Hart.
Aardman Animations was established in 1976 by the cartoonists Peter Lord and David Sproxton. The duo hired animator Park while he was still a student at Sheffield City Polytechnic and by then he had already begun making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out.
Park's genius won Aardman an Oscar in 1990 for Creature Comforts, a short film in which zoo animals discuss how they feel about living behind bars. The company won two further Oscars for the Wallace and Gromit films The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995).
Aardman's creative talents were also seen in the pop world, with the studio collectively working on the ground-breaking 1986 video for the Peter Gabriel song Sledgehammer. An award from music channel MTV for that video was one of the items lost in the blaze.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, is the second film in a £155 million five-picture deal with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks empire and revolves around a plan by the inventor and his canine friend to use a complex vacuum system to protect vegetables from a monster rabbit in their village.
The first film, Chicken Run, loosely based on the plot of Steve McQueen's war classic, The Great Escape, became the third highest-grossing British movie in the US on its release in 2000.
The enormous popularity of the characters from Creature Comforts opened up a new line for Aardman in advertising as the public lapped up the comic combination of Plasticine figures and vox-pop interviews with real people. Aardman now produces up to 30 commercials a year for clients such as Chevron, PG Tips, Tennents, Homepride, Nike and Dr Pepper. Aardman's animators also turned BBC pundit and former England soccer captain Gary Lineker into a Mr Potato Head in an advert for Walkers crisps. Creature Comfort characters were used in TV and cinema ads to help publicise the new Countryside Code last year.
Despite the fact Wallace and Gromit inhabit a peculiarly English world of flat caps and Wensleydale cheese, the appeal of the hapless pair has translated into dozens of markets abroad. The films have been shown in 46 countries, ranging from Iran to Lithuania and Uruguay to Japan.
The Plasticine models of Aardman's characters have a short shelf-life and are continually remade for new productions. Every second of film requires about 25 tiny adjustments to each character featured in any scene.