Artistic Limerick adults relive their youth with Wallace and Gromit workshop

ARTISTIC adults got to relive their childhood at a special Wallace and Gromit workshop in Limerick city centre last weekend.

As part of the sixth Elemental arts festival in Limerick, Aardman Studios—the creators of the Oscar-winning stop motion animation—presented three workshops for adults and children at FabLab on Rutland Street on Saturday.

Three sessions took place, which involve recreating famous Aardman characters Gromit, Hobnob and Feathers McGraw.

The kids, being familiar with Gromit, spent an hour moulding together the famous dog. Will Harding, senior modeller at Aardman said the experience is always “amazing”.

“It’s amazing. If you give kids such a short amount of time, it’s only like an hour session, it’s amazing what they can produce. They say you always sculpt a little bit of yourself in whatever you do, and I think that comes down in the end result. Everyone of them looks like Gromit, but they also look that little bit different.”

The adults got to remake Feathers McGraw from the 1993 short The Wrong Trousers. “I wouldn’t say he is necessarily the hardest [to make], but some of the kids won’t have the reference. But he’s by far one of my favourite characters in Wallace and Gromit,” Will said. 

Elemental organiser Jennifer Allen said it was great to have Aardman down in Limerick for a second time, especially for the adults. 

“They never get asked to do fun stuff. It’s always: ‘Have you filed your tax returns? Have you got your NCT done?’ So it’s nice to legitimately be allowed to have fun,” she said.