Wallace’s sidekick Gromit was nearly a cat, says creator
Aardman Animations creator Nick Park revealed that the iconic character Gromit was originally intended to be a cat. He switched the character to a dog because he found clay modeling a cat to be too difficult.
Why it matters
Provides historical context for a globally recognized pop culture franchise ahead of the studio's 50th anniversary.
Gromit became a dog because modelling a cat was 'very difficult', said Nick Park, who joined Aardman Animations in 1985 - Television Stills Between chasing gun-slinging penguins and flying to the moon, Gromit probably could have used nine lives instead of one.
If it were not for the difficulties of clay modelling, Wallace's trusty companion would have been a cat , the pair's creator has said.
The bungling inventor could have gone without his beloved "pooch", had it not been so hard to model a cat for what became one of Britain's best-known animations from the 1980s.
Ahead of Aardman Animation's 50th anniversary this month, Nick Park, who invented the characters, told BBC News: "I had this idea of an English guy who builds a rocket in the basement of his house.
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