CLAYDREAM..Documentary about Will Vinton

 This is the trailer for the finished film started in 2017 originally called "Welcome to My Daydream " about Will Vinton and his studio.

 CLAYDREAM_Follow link for the Tribeca premiere screening: TODAY Sunday, June 13th @ 4pm pst https://www.tribecafilm.com/films/claydream-2021

This is a still from the documentary of Will and myself discussing a scene

 Will and I discussing a scene

 

"Welcome To My Daydream" a New Documentary

At last, the whole story of Will Vinton and Claymation is going to be told by filmmaker Marq Evans in the new documentary “Welcome To My Daydream”

This link from Cartoon Brew goes more in depth about the film and its importance in animation history: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/documentary-2/exclusive-first-look-will-vinton-documentary-welcome-daydream-153840.html  

I’m not sure where I first saw “Rip Van Winkle” but it touched me emotionally with that strange beauty good animation has.  I remember these surreal moments in the film where Rip is dancing in the sky with pulsing color blobs set to the beat of the music, and how affecting the song Rip sang to his friend at the end was.   Later, I ran across a 16MM print of the early documentary made in the 70's about Claymation and saw a young Will Vinton with long hair and a full beard, along with Barry Bruce, and I think, Bill Fiesterman, and Joan Gratz.  It must have been during the shooting of “Martin the Cobbler” because it had this great scene where a clay crew of stage hands is frustrating the clay actor playing Martin. The door to the miniature set opens and the giant head of Will himself peeks in to ask how things are going on set.  I knew then and there these were people after my own heart and wanted to work for them one day. 

Not only is Will one of the sweetest people I know, but so many good things have come from the opportunities he made possible for me and many others.  Thank you Mr. Vinton, I look forward to seeing your story continue.  

Dino Floss

I was sent some old memories.  My daughter grew up watching a children’s show called Adventures in Wonderland on the Disney Channel that had animated stories done by the Will Vinton Studios.  Here’s a piece I did called Dino Floss that John Ashley Pratt designed the characters for.  These stories were some of the most fun I had at the studio and I ended up doing over twenty of them.  Good times!

Stop Motion in the Digital Age #5: The Hybrid Film

           "Kubo and the Two Strings", Laika's latest film, is about to be released.  It looks fantastic.

 

In past postings on this blog about stop motion in general, and in the digital age, (type Stop Motion in the search bar to see all the posts), I’ve personally wrestled with the reasoning behind this hybrid style because it seemed as though everything could have been done with computers.  Now, I think the penny has finally dropped, and I’m beginning to understand the logic behind it.

Personally, as an animator who has done both stop-mo and c.g., if I were given a puppet that was well built and allowed me to get the gestures I wanted, and having the same character built as c.g., I would choose the puppet anytime.  Let me explain.  The interface of a  c.g. character is not as immediate or intuitive as touching and moving a puppet.  I could move much faster, and keep my focus on performance by not having to pick through menus and processes that are found in computer animation.  Somewhere in this blog are posts about input devices that would allow a person to manipulate a puppet that moves a c.g. figure, so you can see the idea of 'if only I could just grab this thing and move it around', has been thought about in computer animation.

True, the computer allows you to embellish and improve the animation through a process of refinements, but with the new frame grabbing software programs like Dragon Stop Motion, you can see your scene as you are animating, and play it back at real time, and make changes to your animation without re-shooting your whole scene, similar to the computers allowing refinements.  Both styles of animation are time consuming and take great skill, so where's the advantage?

Here’s the logic:  By building your character as a stop motion puppet you have the speed and intimacy of stop motion, plus the new power of digital assistance while animating, in rig removal, facial replacements. And by building a c.g. character, it can be manipulated with no restrictions, (armatures, support rigs,) for facial animation, special effects, populating crowd scenes, and it would interface with particle programs and other c.g. dynamics making the best of both worlds.

We’ve already talked about computers used to export or rapid proto type printing of props and full color replacement heads, and we talked about computers for sets and environments where characters are added into it through green screen. 

The computer has changed the way films are made in every way. Live action movies are loaded with effects no one would know were there until shown.  Computers have change the way animated films are made, people no longer using paper and pencil, paint or even film. So, I think I finally get it.

Kudos to Laika and “Kubo and the Two Strings”.

   

Stop Motion in the Digital Age #04

In earlier postings we touched on replacement animation used in stop-motions history, and facial animation  replacements as early as 1935.  We also tracked the replacement evolution with computer sculptures exported as 3D prints being used as early as 2004.

My friend Raphael Cordero ,(whose studio did the sculpture, molds, and castings), posted some images that helps define a timeline for the facial replacements evolution even better with these hand cast test pieces for the 2001 production of the Will Vinton TV series "Gary and Mike", a production that has greater relevance with the digital age, which I will explain later.  These were hand sculpted, using a frame grabber, (see previous post Claymation, Techniques and Innovations ), to ensure registration, and then cast in resin.  The faces were split through the eyes and held on the head with interlocking magnets.

It must be remembered that the 1993 production of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" used both facial replacements and a stored image/live image form of frame grabber. The G&M faces were the first to split the face into two pieces.

These G&M replacements precede Laika's "Corline" which used the same split face and magnetic registration, by eight years.  The difference here being these were hand sculpted and cast replacements, as opposed to computer sculptures exported as 3D prints. 

I'm not sure why this technique wasn't used in the actual production, which went with wax replacement mouths, (I feel it may have been too expensive), but the craftsmanship is astounding and the seam on the face is almost invisible, at least in this still image.

As have been stated before, the computer allows the ability to do more easing into and out of facial extremes, making smoother animation with less chatter, and a way of previewing and modifying before exporting to hard print copies.

 "Gary and Mike" has the distinction of being the first stop motion production to be done digitally. Before then, it was customary for animation to be shot on film and then transferred to video.  This bypassed that method using small lip stick sized digital cameras placed on sets and a custom made data storage system was built to accommodate all the digital still images that made up the action.

The initial cost was hoped to be made back by avoiding film development, and film to tape transfer expenses. It was quite an undertaking for the time, and because of being digital, effects work and other elements could be combined without a film to tape transfer.

The infrastructure for the Will Vinton digital pipeline used for "Gary and Mike" in 2001, created a template for much of the feature work being done today.

Test head replacements for "Gary and Mike" from the Raphael Cordero Studio

General Reel From Yesteryear

General Reel From Yesteryear from Joel Brinkerhoff on Vimeo.

This is a mix of computer, stop-motion, and drawn animation from various projects I've worked on.  All the animation is mine, most of it very old.

Stop Motion in the Digital Age #03

The last post focused on the evolution of replacement animation and the advancement of using rapid prototyping technology to create hard copy color face replacements.

Now, CINEFEX blog has run a nice comprehensive article on LAIKA's latest film "The Boxtrolls" that explains the mixing of traditional stop-motion and computer imagery.

The piece has several examples showing the process of rig removal, integration of effects, and the additions of background characters and entire backgrounds.  

Check it out here:  http://cinefex.com/blog/boxtrolls/

Update:   Director/Animator Jim Clark sent me this information about Laika's evolution of rapid prototyping  having originated with him.  Here is what Jim says:

This is probably the most creative, simple and best use of this technology+art I've seen in years. I was the first artist to adopt 3D printers for stop-motion - way back in 1999, so I have a special appreciation for it. Wow, the technology has come soo far and I love, love, love this piece!

In mid 1999, I printed my first 3D CG character in plaster and the use for stop-motion struck me, but it was still to early and expensive. In 2004 I convinced my then-employeer to purchase an early-model 3D plastic extrusion printer for our use in stop-motion production. We initially used it extensively on an HP Flea commercial to create all of our detailed set pieces. After, we printed the self-aligning replacement faces for an animated Anti-Smoking campaign, then we used it to create glow-in-the-dark stop-mo tracking heads for a hybrid animated commercial for Lux Soap where we replaced the practical head with a matching CG head in post. The uses go on and on.

My fabrication team eventually went to Laika, adopted the process and further refined it on Coraline. They have since perfected the methodology on Paranorman and The Box Trolls with 3D printed full-color faces. Rad!

I really enjoy seeing my original idea and influence adopted and further developed in this art form, after all these years.

Stop Motion in the Digital Age No.02

Since animation is a series of still images with slight changes made to achieve motion, the idea of replacing the object altogether came very early in stop motion history.  The process was termed 'replacement animation'.

Today, technology has allowed Laika Studios to push the bounds of rapid prototyping, 3-D-printing all of the puppets' faces in color. 

Who first used the replacement technique is lost to time but George Pal began making his “Puppetoons” series in 1932 and used a method of planning action as a traditionally drawn animation and then carving entire figures in wood which were replaced for each frame of motion based on the 2D drawings!

Here’s a lovely video that tells Pals story better than I can.

George Pal surrounded by his puppet replacements

A walk cycle from George Pal

Whole head replacements by George Pal

 

Later, instead of replacing the entire figure, just the faces were replacements and the bodies were the traditional ball and socket armatures still used today.  This 1935 film, “Hector the Pup” by John Burton is a fun use of mouth replacement:

 

Laika Studio has taken the replacements to a new level using computers to build models and printing them out in color as hard copies.  Although brittle, there is the advantage of making multiple copies for teams of animators.  They also move more smoothly than the chatter seen in older replacements.

Digital sculptures printed out in color from "Paranorman"

Check out these great expressions on a set of whole face replacements from the up and coming “Boxtrolls” soon to be released this September.

Digital sculptures printed out in color from "The Boxtrolls"

Update:  Here's a dandy article on how Laika has made stop-motion relevant today: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/travis-knight-stop-motion-boxtrolls/#slide-id-1417381

RIP Ray Harryhausen

Well it finally happened.  Today we lost another pioneer of animation, Ray Harryhausen.  Without his contribution to stop motion we would have never grown up with the wonder and magic of his films.  He saw the media as a way of realizing classic mythology and combining supernatural creatures with live action.

His films crossed age barriers and generations appealing to both young and old.  His inspiration bred a new generation of artists in stop motion and computer animation.  We owe a tremendous debt to Mr. Harryhausen and I'm glad he saw some return of affection and appreciation by throngs of admiring fans before he passed.  Thanks for all the dreams and wonder, Ray.

   

Registration in Stop Motion

With three stop motion films running for this years Academy Award, the interest in stop-mo has warmed up again.  I thought I would share a trick I found very helpful.  Today so much is done digitally and elements are shot on green screen and combined with others to finish a scene, but this trick is still invaluable if you want to do a scene in one pass.

I had to animate a character walking through a table top full of food.  Now I'm a short guy with not much reach so it was a stretch for me to even get to the character. I had to stand on apple boxes. How was I to get to my puppet without knocking all that food around? 

First off let me mention that none of the food was real and done by a terrific artist in wax.  Even the lemonade was a solid mixture of silicone or something.  I solved my dilemma by first registering the plates of food with corner brackets.  Corner brackets are flat metal pieces you can screw or glue down to your table top.  I used a thin veneer and cut square pieces the size of each plate that I wanted to register and glued it to the plates bottom.  Then I placed the plates on my set and anchored the brackets around two sides of the veneer at the back.  This let me pull the plate forward and remove it entirely while I animated my puppet.  Using the brackets, I could drop the food back into place and not have to worry about it moving around.

I hope the diagram helps explain things a little better.  I might tell you about 'nesting' sometime.

P.S.  The music in this video clip is not from the original scene which was the little guy talking.

Skeleton Fight

This relates to my last post about stop motion which mentioned Michael Sporn's blog.  If you bothered to go there he had included an interview with Ray Harryhausen talking about his regret that the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts couldn't be at night.  Ray doesn't give a reason but I agree it would have been more dramatic.  Even so you have to admit it's pretty cool and captures that magic element I spoke about in yearly stop motion films.  Thanks Ray for filling my life with dreams and the magic of animation.

Sporn on Stop Motion

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=3255

Above is a link to an article by Michael Sporn about his musings on the sophistication of modern stop motion. He wondered how a master like Ray Harryhausen would fare in the modern world of rapid prototyping and the ability to make stop motion almost indistinguishable from computer animation?  I don’t know for sure but I think Ray would be cool with it. He was certainty trying to make his work as believable as possible with the tools of his day.

I think I know what Michael means though. There is an ‘other-worldliness’ to old school stop motion, particularly when combined with live action, that tickles the imagination. It’s undeniably real and yet something about it is not. It’s magic. That quality Michael mentions caused by shooting on twos or the differences in film grain or lighting which were really unintentional drawbacks in production seem to further push that indefinable magical quality making it more akin to dreams and hallucinations. The very artificialness, (is that a word?),  makes the action more memorable.

A production like “A Nightmare Before Christmas” which used the latest technology like a frame grabber system, (a live frame and a captured frame ), and computers for rig removal, also used replacement faces to give more expression to the puppets.  Even with these improvements the puppets didn't squash and stretch like organic objects and still had that rigidity we recognize as stop motion.

I see the use of computers as a natural progression in film making. The use of rapid prototyping and full color exporting of computer models has forever changed stop motion. The fluid movements and organic distortion of computer animation has spilled over and one wonders if stop motion will become, I fear,  redundant since a lot of it begins as computer models anyway?

Congratulations Bent

The stop-motion special "Jingle All the Way" was accepted into the 2012 Annecy Festival lineup. Congratulations to director Chel White and the team at Bent Image Lab. This was a fun project to work on and another is planned for the Hallmark Channel with pre-production happening now.

Jingle

Here's the promo for the Holiday Special I did some animation for. Don't confuse this with the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the same name!

Jingle All the Way from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Back to Stop Motion

Okay, Hallmark has given an air date: Friday, November 25 (8 p.m. ET/PT, 7C) so I can talk about this now.

It's been awhile since I have posted anything about anything. Partly because I took a much needed vacation, and mostly because upon my returned I took an offer to do some stop motion again for a Holiday Special called "Jingle All the Way".
It's very cute and has a lot of heart and I hope it will become a perennial favorite like "Rudolph" but, oh my, I forgot how physical stop motion animation is, and I've been just too tired to do anything else afterward.

The first week had me climbing onto a table top to reach the characters for every frame, (I think it was a shot well over 100 frames too), and the first night I has a massive leg cramp that made me stifle crying out and waking my wife. I've lost five pounds so that's not bad, but I've also lost sleep worrying about how to get shots done.

I've had a chance to work with some new technology that wasn't around before called Dragon Stop Motion which is pretty cool and allows you to plot out your shots with more accuracy. I also have renewed admiration for all the talent involved in a stop-mo production. It takes a fairly sizable crew to light and build sets and keep the puppets in good repair.

It's also humbling to work with the other animators. They're all so talented and young. I asked one of the crew if they had worked on "The PJs" which was a stop motion TV series that ran three seasons. She laughed and said she hadn't been born yet! Man, I'm old.

I'm mostly looking forward to watching this with my grand-kids, (yes, I said grand-kids. I told you I was old.). I also want one of those Jingle Xmas ornaments for my tree!

Hallmarks Jingle Xmas Ornament

The Hallmark Book the Special is based on.


Read more about the production here:http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/Jingle-All-The-Way-Premires-Exclusively-On-Hallmark-1125-20110727

Old Memories

I found this digging through old stuff. The picture on the back is pretty impressive as everyone is in focus. I recognize almost everyone I worked with but there are a lot of folks I never knew and some folks are missing including myself I think. I may be one of those eyes peeping over a shoulder though there should be a bald head or ball-cap.

Click Image to Enlarge

Missed History

Today, thirty-one years after its original release, Will Vinton’s now classic and award-winning animation of “The Little Prince” was presented at the Hollywood Theater with some of the original voice cast members reprising their roles live, along with sound effects artists and live music.

I couldn't make it but I dearly would have loved to. After 13 years with the Will Vinton Studios it would have been wonderful to talk once again with these gifted, creative people.

Megan Kahrs, another former employee, was there and posted some pictures on facebook which I'm using without her permission.

The middle picture starting with the mustachioed Mr. Vinton on the left, includes Joan Gratz, who won her own Oscar for the claypainted "Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase", and master animator/director Barry Bruce who defined the look of Claymation.

If you've never seen "The Little Prince & Rip Van Winkle" or "The Adventures of Mark Twain" they are available here: http://willvinton.net/filmDistribution.htm

This blog is peppered with postings on Will Vinton, Joan Gratz, and Barry Bruce if you're interested.

Finding Stop Motion

I tried to build a stop motion demo reel with the bits and pieces I have kept but found most was in an unusable format. The usable things are the commercial bits at the beginning with Barbie and all. I found some badly compressed sequences on YouTube of my work from the TV show "The PJs" shot at Will Vinton Studios. It looks awful but I captioned the characters I'd done and the whole process brought back a lot of memories.

"PJs" ran three seasons and was controversial from the start. From an animation stand point it was very well organized and people were top notch making it happen. This was gorilla animation and I can't remember the exact daily frame count needed to stay on schedule but it was well over a hundred frames. It meant no 'pop-through' where you put the puppets through a few trial shots. Many times it involved group shots with the entire cast, each one having their own idiosyncrasies.

It's a very different kind of animation than commercial or theatrical.

Claymation tools

Will Vinton

A fellow animator was asking how certain things were accomplished at Will Vinton's Claymation Studio. Here is a paraphrased version of the questions and answers.

Q: When you join pieces together, how do you erase (blend) the seams? Especially when reaching across a crowded set to get access to the puppet at a 45 degree angle.

A: You might want to consider ways of gaining access to your characters so you don't have to bend in unnatural ways. If you can pin register props like tables and chairs you can remove them and get to your figures and then replace them for the shot. I've had walls on hinges that swung out of the way so I could get to characters. If a character is seen from the waist up or never walks or is seated, we sometimes mounted them on a square platform and registered them with 'L' brackets screws to the floor. We lift the thing out and drop it back into the brackets.

Q: What kind of tooling technique is used to get that mottled/carved wood look? Gairy Bialke was probably best known for that style. It looks awesome, especially on arms and legs.

A: The chiseled look to some Claymation probably started with Barry Bruce who used what became known as a Barry Stick. It has a flat surface with a blade on one side and a round edge too. We made our own custom tools in the wood shop and a variation made by Jeff Mulcaster became my favorite tool. It's small and extremely versatile. (See diagram)

Click Image to Enlarge

Basically the flat side was used to spread the clay, kind of like frosting a cake. We were using the soft Van Aken and the flat tool side also was used to block out the shapes giving you that carved kind of look. The sharp blade created creases and the round side was used to smooth and blend . The curving tip was used for prying open spaces, smoothing and detailing, and on the Mulcaster tool it was great for detailing small areas.

Q: In EB's mustache at the end of Claymation Easter, how was it modified from fame to frame to appear as though the lines were bending (looks almost like morphing or deforming, but the lines would have to be re-scribed, and it doesn't look like they are).



A: The mustaches were clay replacements you could bend and shape so they looked like they were morphing until you replaced it with the shape you wanted. We has a mold to make copies.

Q: How was the lip sync done on the Raisins? This is probably my biggest question because I can't tell if it was completely torn apart and re-sculpted every frame, or if it was a single expression being re-worked frame to frame. Even with live action reference, I would have trouble with some of those mouth shapes. It's incredibly fluid.

A: The lip sync was done using live action reference of the actors preforming their lines. We all had Moviolas at our sets and tried to match the lip shapes the best we could. Generally the mouth was carved out leaving a cave from cheek to cheek and nose to chin which was lined with black clay. The mouth was built up using rolls of flesh colored clay spiraled around the edges of cave until you got the mouth size you wanted. Then you smoothed out the spiral and added the lip details. If you were very careful and remembered where your cave was you could cut these mouth shapes out and use them again like replacements.

Stop Motion Mission

http://justinrasch.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=8

I've never met this couple but I've grown to love them and their family following the making and success of their award winning film "Gerald's Last Day".

Justin Rasch has a terrific blog called Stop Motion Mission, (follow link or click on title), that chronicles the making of his film with the help of his wife Shel and their entire family. The blog videos show a family who combine work and play with an infectious joy and passion not only for animation but life in general.

It's wonderful to see the rewards starting to come in and the well deserved recognition for Justin's super terrific animation skills.