BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) -- It has taken some time, but life has changed dramatically for Nick Park. He has gone from making the 24-minute stop-action student film “A Grand Day Out” in 1989 to his latest full-length feature film “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” that debuted at the historic Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. Along the way, Park picked up four Oscars for his tales of a cheese-loving man and his dutiful dog. The film will be released on the streaming service Netflix starting Jan. 3. “I keep having to pinch myself. When I think back to my National Film School days and even just thinking up two goofy names for the characters and to see that they’ve stuck and become household names now is just phenomenal and unbelievable,” Park says. The latest work from Park and Emmy Award-nominated Merlin Crossingham has Gromit concerned that Wallace is becoming too dependent on his inventions. That proves justified when Wallace invents a “smart” gnome that seems to develop a mind of its own. The plot turns sinister with a vengeful figure – the penguin known as Feathers McGraw – may be behind the change in the gnomes. Originally, the film was going to have a running time of 30 minutes but once the decision was made to bring Feathers back as the villain, the decision was made that more screen time was needed. That meant a longer work process for the team at Aardman Animations. Park says, “It started off as a half hour and it was about the gnomes and gnomes going wrong. But it seemed like it needed some more kind of sinister motive behind the gnomes and that’s why there was Feathers on this show offering his services. “That was a massive breakthrough. Wallace and Gromit had a foe with a great screen presence and a real threat. A personal threat to Wallace and Gromit did up the ante quite a lot in the movie and made it more cinematic.” One thing those who work in stop-animation – a process where clay figures are moved and photographed one frame at a time – is patience. The idea for “Vengeance Most Fowl” has been kicking around for two decades after coming up while the team was making “Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” Because gnomes have always been a big part of Wallace and Gromit’s world, that led to the idea of a smart gnome. Executive producer Carla Shelley says, “You can’t rush a good thing, that’s what we always say in the studio. It’s always just finding the right idea. I think Nick has had an idea to sort of smart gnome idea. He’s had a love of gnomes for a very long time within the ‘Wallace & Gromit’ universe.” It is not only the process of coming up with the next adventure for Wallace and Gromit that takes time. Making stop-animated films is a slow and tedious job as an animator produces 4.2 seconds of animation each week. That means the 30 animators working on the film during peak production times will produce 127 seconds of animation each week. The running time of the latest film is 79 minutes. The 17-second shot featuring Police Constable Mukherjee on the telephone was the longest scene to animate taking five weeks. The work bringing Wallace and Gromit to life has been successful from the start with “Creature Comforts” winning the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. Its success led to two further half-hour films – “The Wrong Trousers” (1993) and “A Close Shave” (1995) - which went on to win Park another pair of Oscars. “The Curse of The Were-Rabbit” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2005. Park returned to the half-hour format with “A Matter of Loaf and Death” in 2008. Over the decades, “Wallace & Gromit” has had an enduring appeal with audiences globally, hosting their own documentary series “World of Invention,” as well as many commercials, computer games, a classical concert combining live orchestra with custom-made animation, and even a roller-coaster ride in the seaside resort of Blackpool, England. What has changed slightly over the decades is the filming process. The difference is that instead of shooting the productions on film, digital cameras are used and that has made life a little easier. With film, someone would drive the footage to the laboratory and wait for it to be processed. That way the team could see the next day what had been filmed and make any necessary corrections. Digital provides an immediate way to check the footage. “We shoot on digital cameras instead of 35-millimeter film and it’s a great safety net because for example, if a shot goes wrong - picture falls off the wall - the shot isn’t lost. You can mend things afterwards,” Park says.