News / 23 Jul 2025
Animation students bring Earnshaw’s WOKKER back to life
BA (Hons) Animation
BA (Hons) Animation students have been working on a new film featuring ‘WOKKER,’ a character co-designed by Anthony Earnshaw, to be shown in new exhibition dedicated to his life and work.
Students from BA (Hons) Animation were set a live brief by Senior Lecturer Ben Simpson to bring WOKKER back to life with a new animated film. Ben directed the six students, Meron Tefari, Mabel Alcock, Anca Nicula, Cody Reily, Sean De Asis and Micheal Dimpsey across a range of roles, including backgrounds, composition and animation.
In collaboration with Gail Earnshaw, Anthony’s widow, WOKKER has returned, strutting once more in a larger than life format at ‘Anthony Earnshaw - The Imp of Surrealism’ exhibition at Dean Clough, Halifax.
The efforts undertaken by the students to bring WOKKER back, particularly lead animator and producer Anca Nicula, delighted Gail Earnshaw when she saw WOKKER, “actually move for the first time”.
"WOKKER has been such an amazing experience, I'm honoured to have been able to bring this iconic character to life. I hope that this adaption will introduce more people into the Wokker series, and people are as inspired by the animated version as the original! WOKK ON!"
Anca Nicula, BA (Hons) Animation student, lead animator and producer
WOKKER, the gloriously baffling bird with attitude, was hatched in 1966 from the brain of Eric Thacker, a Methodist minister, jazz critic and poet. Anthony Earnshaw, postwar English Surrealist then worked with Thacker, bringing his wheeled bird to life.
Together, they gave WOKKER not just wheels, but a full-blown personality: pompous, verbose, finger-wagging and thoroughly insufferable in the most delightful way. Under the pseudonym ‘Wok,’ they unleashed their bird-brained creation onto the world.
WOKKER found his way onto the walls of London’s ICA in 'AAARGH! A Celebration of Comics' (1970–71), then briefly into The Times Educational Supplement for one short-lived year in 1971 before being deemed too surreal, even for the experimental crowd.
While Thacker then moved onto other ecclesiastical or poetic pursuits, Earnshaw continued turning WOKKER into a cult curio.
“Earnshaw’s surreal, dreamlike works crackle with wit, paradox, and a mild sense of rebellion, transforming the everyday into the gently bonkers. A Leeds breakthrough in 1966 secured his Surrealist stripes, and now, at Dean Clough, WOKKER is reborn, life-sized, animated, and still gloriously incomprehensible, especially as its playing on a VHS video loop via a 1970s black and white TV!”
Ben Simpson, BA (Hons) Animation Senior Lecturer
The animated antics of WOKKER is on show now at 'Anthony Earnshaw - The Imp of Surrealism', at Crossley Gallery, D Mill, Dean Clough, Halifax, until Sunday 28 September 2025.