Over the years, Feathers has popped up in other Aardman productions. In the 1995 Wallace and Gromit adventure “A Close Shave,” which also won the Academy Award, when Gromit gets sent to prison, there’s graffiti in his cell that reads “Feathers was ‘ere.” And the character can be seen, for a single frame, in a scene later on in the short.

Not only is stop motion one of the most complicated forms of animation, it’s also reliant on having some of the most talented, and patient, craftspeople in the business. That’s something Aardman Animations,

Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, directors of the latest “Wallace and Gromit” tale, talk mixing claymation with modernity… and notes from Jeffrey Katzenberg.