Nick Park and his team of animators return to Wallace and Gromit after Chicken Run with Cracking Contraptions, an animated short comprised of ten two-minute sketches, each demonstrating one of Wallace's inventions and Gromit's quintessentially canine longsuffering loyalty. The previous Wallace and Gromit shorts, being single stories, were more ambitious and textured, but Cracking Contraptions was really only made as a warm-up exercise for the animators before embarking on a feature film with the characters. It was an overwhelmingly successful exercise: Cracking Contraptions not only demonstrates that the animators still have a solid grasp on what makes the characters work, but it's hilariously creative. The best of the inventions is the Snoozatron, which had me falling out of my chair, but all of them display joyful, exuberant humor and clever nuance.