Acclaimed UK animation studio Aardman has gone into production with 12 new one-minute Wallace And Gromit films, which are to be released later this year on the internet.

Meanwhile, the company has announced that its anticipated DreamWorks SKG-backed Wallace And Gromit feature, the script for which Nick Park has been writing for the last year, will be titled The Great Vegetable Plot.

Aardman's new Wallace And Gromit web shorts feature the hapless Wallace's outlandish inventions - such as the Bowl-O-Matic Machine and the Breakfast TV Toaster - which his long suffering pet dog Gromit is made to demonstrate.

Based on a so-called movie album concept by Media Ideas Ltd, fans will visit chosen web sites to collect a series of short film clips. Each set unlocks a whole film for viewing on a free CD Rom, and a new film will be available for collection onto the album each weekend.

In May 2000, Aardman released the free animated shorts series Angry Kid online, which it says has now recouped its production costs through online sponsorships and commercial tie-ins.

Work is still continuing on the rewrite of the DreamWorks-backed feature Tortoise Vs Hare, after Aardman took it out of production last year blaming story problems.