If you respect the audience enough, they can take onboard many things.

Americans like the British kind of quirkiness and the strange accent. They find it kind of cute or something, with a certain charm.

But I think people see 'Wallace and Gromit' as something akin to an elderly couple. These two know each other so well. Nothing can split them apart.

With some CGI, I think the brain slightly perceives that things aren't real. There's no gravity, the light's not quite real, the shadows aren't quite real.

I have to admit to not being the greatest technician, but stop motion animation gives me licence to create machines that wouldn't otherwise be possible - inventions that seem real and actually work.

After studying in Sheffield, I went down to London to do my post-graduate degree at the National Film and Television School, embarking on the movie that would eventually become 'A Grand Day Out.

Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.