Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up, An Augmented Reality Story

In the first ever AR experience for Wallace & Gromit, multi award-winning independent studio Aardman has partnered with Fictioneers for the release of ‘The Big Fix Up’. Starring the famed British duo, the new app which launches today uses the power of augmented reality to follow the iconic characters’ first new adventure in a decade, their latest business venture, Spick & Spanners taking on the challenge of fixing up the city of Bristol, with the player as the new employee of the company.

Available on iOS and Android devices in the UK, US and Canada, the free app creates a narrative-driven experience, taking the user through AR gameplay, CG animations, in-character phone calls, extended reality (XR) portals, and comic strips. In the new storyline, inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit’s new business venture takes on a contract to “Fix-Up” Bristol, the city where Aardman is based.

Using the latest technology, fans will be able to interact in a host of new ways and get closer than ever to Wallace & Gromit. The experience is rich and multi-layered, realised through innovation and technology.

Scott Ewings, Venture Lead at Potato and co-founder of Fictioneers, said: “We are really excited to launch The Big Fix Up, the first release from our new Fictioneers studio. We believe it’s a first-of-its-kind experience, part of our vision to harness multiple technologies, media types and formats to tell enhanced, collaborative and immersive stories in real time. To do this, we have developed a software platform, the MUST Platform, to enable creative teams to design real-time stories, timelines and activities and then integrate a variety of transmedia to support those stories. With The Big Fix Up, we have created a new, rich and multi-layered experience, where, for the first time ever, YOU can become part of Wallace & Gromit’s story. This will be the first of many releases using the Fictioneers platform.”

Merlin Crossingham, Creative Director of Wallace & Gromit at Aardman said: “Wallace & Gromit have innovation, gadgets, and technology at the comedic heart of their world. Working with Fictioneers to create The Big Fix Up has been a perfect fit, allowing us to bring the duo’s fantastic fictional contraptions right into our audiences homes using the latest real technology.”

Richard Saggers, Chief Operating Officer, Fictioneers said: “We are incredibly proud of The Big Fix Up, which will be the first immersive adventure from our new venture Fictioneers. It’s been an amazing collaboration among the three partners Potato, Tiny Rebel Games and Sugar Creative, and of course the wonderful team at Aardman. It’s truly groundbreaking work which demonstrates the huge opportunity to evolve the ways stories are told. Above all it’s a great example of what a diverse, multi-disciplinary team of creative talents can achieve together.”

‘The Big Fix Up’ is voiced by award-winning British actors Miriam Margolyes and Jim Carter, along with Isy Suttie, Grace Ahmed, Joe Sugg and Ben Whitehead as Wallace.

Using 3D mapping platform Fantasmo, Fictioneers created a city-scale augmented reality experience to bring the Bristol city centre to life at home. Fictioneers worked with Unity Technologies, using its new Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio product and AR Foundation toolkit to build mixed reality and AR applications. Fictioneers, is a collaboration of partners including Potato (part of the AKQA network), Sugar Creative and Tiny Rebel Games, with research support from the University of South Wales. ‘The Big Fix Up’ is also backed by funding from the Government’s UK Research & Innovation.

The Big Fix Up is a unique storytelling experience, take part in the full adventure from the comfort of your own home by downloading the app on the App Store here or Google Play here：

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.uk.fictioneers.big_flutter_up&hl=en_GB&gl=US

About Fictioneers

Fictioneers is a collaboration by three commercial partners: Potato, Sugar Creative, and Tiny Rebel Games. Together with the University of South Wales, they are creating the Audience of the Future “Moving Image” demonstrator, funded by  a multi-million pound grant from Innovate UK, and in partnership with award-winning animation studio Aardman. There’s a heavy focus on collaborative work between the companies and they each bring significant expertise in key areas.

About Potato

Potato is an award-winning digital product studio based in London and San Francisco, whose clients include Google, PepsiCo, the BBC and NatWest. It also specialises in designing cutting-edge immersive experiences, bringing well-known installations to life online for the Natural History Museum and the Tate, and winning a Silver Cannes Lion for developing the first ever in-game voice assistant application.

About Sugar Creative

Sugar Creative is an award-winning multi-skilled innovation studio based in the UK who specialise in delivering projects for global clients that focus on emerging, advanced, and immersive technologies. With partners including Toyota, Allianz, Kingspan, BBC and OSMO they have created projects ranging from entertainment, learning, research, diagnostic, and marketing are regarded as one of the UKs leading creative innovators. They recently launched the cutting edge AR experience ‘Dr.Seuss’ ABC AR’  in collaboration with Dr.Seuss Enterprises to both critical acclaim and app store success.

About Tiny Rebel Games Limited

Tiny Rebel Games Limited, the sister company of Tiny Rebel Games LLC, is an award-winning publisher and developer of richly designed and addictive games for mobile and other platforms. Beginning as a venture for husband and wife team Lee Cummings and Susan Cummings, Tiny Rebel Games culminated over a two decades of work across a broad variety of genres and platforms, including the award-winning Doctor Who: Legacy game, as well as the design and production contributions to such blockbuster successes as the Grand Theft Auto series, Bioshock, Borderlands, and Bully. The latest chapter in Tiny Rebel sees the company expand in size and direct its focus towards storytelling through digital technology, building on the success of its Doctor Who output.

About Aardman

Aardman, based in Bristol (UK) and co-founded in 1976 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, is an independent and multi-award-winning studio. It produces feature films, series, advertising, games and interactive entertainment – such as the ‘visually astonishing’ (The Guardian), BAFTA nominated console game, 11-11: Memories Retold, and the four-times Gold Cannes Lions-winning StorySign app – and innovative attractions for both the domestic and international market, including a new 4D theatre attraction at Efteling in the Netherlands. Its productions are global in appeal, novel, entertaining, brilliantly characterised and full of charm reflecting the unique talent, energy and personal commitment of the Aardmanteam. The studio’s work – which includes the creation of much-loved characters including Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Morph – is often imitated, and yet the company continues to lead the field producing a rare brand of visually stunning content for cinema, broadcasters, digital platforms and live experiences around the world. In November 2018 it became an Employee Owned Organisation, to ensure Aardman remains independent and to secure the creative legacy and culture of the company for many decades to come. www.aardman.com

About Wallace & Gromit

Wallace and Gromit, Aardman’s most loved and iconic duo have been delighting family audiences around the world for 30 years. First hitting our screens in Nick Park’s Academy Award®-winning ‘Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out’ (1989) the pair went on to star in three further half hour specials (Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers (1993), Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf or Death (2009)) and a feature length film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and are internationally celebrated winning over 100 awards at festivals – including 3 Academy Awards® and 5 BAFTA® Awards.

A regular highlight of the primetime BBC schedules, especially during the festive season, they have become British national treasures and icons in their own right. ‘Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf or Death’ still remains the most watched Christmas Day programme since 2008 when it premiered on BBCOne. With a permanent attraction at Blackpool Pleasure Beach with over 500,000 riders every year, over 1 million fans on Facebook and over 15million views on YouTube, these perennial characters continue to grow audiences across multiple platforms.

Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Charity is a national charity raising funds to improve the lives of sick children in hospitals and hospices throughout the UK, raising over £50million since 1995.

Source:fictioneer