Client
Aardman
Location
London, UK
Collaborators
Lightroom
Sector
Location-Based Entertainment
Services Provided:
Story
Narrative Development
Creative Concepting & Experience Mapping
Design
Experience Design
Immersive Media Design
Video & Animation Design
Technology
Immersive Media & Projection Mapping
Challenge
How do you take a creative world defined by tiny, hand-crafted sets, painstaking stop-motion and extraordinary attention to detail, and make it feel at home across four 36-foot-tall walls and the floor?
Celebrating Aardman’s 50th anniversary, Larger Than Life: Starring Wallace & Gromit, Shaun and More invites audiences inside the joyful, anarchic worlds of some of Britain’s most beloved characters, while revealing the imagination, craftsmanship and people behind them.
The challenge was to translate the intimacy and tactile quality of Aardman’s work into an immersive 360° experience at extraordinary scale, without losing the unmistakably handmade spirit at its heart.
Solution
The experience was created in close collaboration with the Aardman production team. It is designed by Journey, written and co-directed by Journey’s Nicol Scott and Kate Stanley, and produced by and showcased at Lightroom.
The 50-minute looping show brings together iconic cinematic moments, rarely seen archival material and bespoke new animation, surrounding audiences with the characters, stories and creative process that have shaped Aardman over five decades.
Rather than simply making familiar moments bigger, Journey designed the experience to move between two perspectives: stepping inside Aardman’s extraordinary fictional worlds, and stepping behind the camera to understand how those worlds are made.
“It’s a thrill to see Aardman’s worlds leap off the screen and into this spectacular immersive experience… It’s a wonderful new chapter for these characters, blending our stop-motion heritage with cutting-edge magic to bring everyone right into the center of the action.”
– Nick Park, Creator of Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Creature Comforts, Aardman
Tiny moves, huge worlds
Aardman’s work begins at a remarkably small scale.
A sketch, a piece of clay, a miniature set, a camera and an animator moving a character one tiny increment at a time can eventually become a story recognized around the world.
Journey used the scale of Lightroom to heighten that contrast. Details usually measured in centimeters expand across the architecture, allowing audiences to explore the textures, imperfections and physical craft that give Aardman its distinctive character.
Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Morph and the worlds around them become truly larger than life, while retaining the handmade qualities that make them feel so human.
Behind the camera
The experience is as much about the act of making as the finished films themselves.
Audiences travel from the early experiments of Aardman founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton through drawings, models, sets, cameras, lights and animation units, seeing how an initial idea gradually becomes a finished scene.
Familiar cinematic moments sit alongside material from the Aardman archive and glimpses into the studio itself. From the earliest sketches to the celebrated train chase in Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, the experience continually shifts between imagination and execution.
“The joy of this project was bringing Aardman’s wonderfully handcrafted worlds to life on an extraordinary scale, without losing the detail, humor and personality that make them so special. Working closely with the Aardman team, we wanted to create something that audiences could not only immerse themselves in, but feel emotionally connected to. We combined storytelling, animation, sound and music to create an experience that is both playful and emotionally engaging for a wide range of audiences. It celebrates not just the characters we know and love, but the people, creativity and craftsmanship behind them, allowing audiences to experience the magic of Aardman in a whole new way.”
— Nicol Scott, Design Director, Journey
A celebration of making
At its heart, Larger Than Life is a celebration of creativity.
For 50 years, Aardman has transformed simple materials into characters and stories with an extraordinary ability to connect across generations and nations. Journey’s approach was to make that creative spirit tangible, creating an experience where audiences can enjoy the spectacle of Aardman’s worlds while also discovering the ideas, people and craft behind them.
Larger Than Life: Starring Wallace & Gromit, Shaun and More is showing at Lightroom, King’s Cross, London from October 14, 2026 until January 4 2027. Book tickets here.
Impact
The Times
★★★★★
“If you’re feeling gloomy about AI or the world in general, go and see this inspiring, cynicism-killer of a show. We’re not doomed yet, Gromit.”
The Telegraph
★★★★
“Whizz-bang visuals and knitted tea-cosies collide in an irresistible, immersive celebration of the handmade wonders of Aardman Animation”
Immersive Rumours
“As Wallace would say, they’ve done a cracking job”