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56-415: Their debut in television commercials on May 1, 1995, featured talking cars done in clay animation , with a variety of car colors each with different personalities. The commercials themselves, done in a similar fashion to the animated film and television series Creature Comforts , were crafted by Aardman Animations and used to promote Chevron with Techron . A year later, Chevron gas stations began selling

112-663: A Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program . Claymation Comedy of Horrors was nominated for this category, but lost to The Simpsons . All were later released to video and DVD. In the 1990s, a variety of Vinton's 400 + animators and technicians helped with new creations and films of their own using the Vinton facilities called the Walkabout Program . Craig Bartlett created his short film Arnold Escapes From Church (1988) and generated two more clay-animated short films, The Arnold Waltz (1990) and Arnold Rides

168-450: A cel-animated show, The California Raisins Show . A couple of music albums of songs from the specials, produced by Nu Shooz pop rock band leader John Smith were also released. CBS also commissioned three more prime-time specials, Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration (1987), Claymation Comedy of Horrors (1991), and Claymation Easter (1992). Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration and Claymation Easter won

224-537: A feature-length documentary film about the California counter-culture movement titled Gone for a Better Deal , which toured college campuses in various film festivals of the time. Two more films about student protest followed, Berkeley Games and First Ten Days , as well a narrative short Reply , and his first animation , Culture Shock . Vinton received his bachelor's degree in architecture from UC Berkeley in 1970. Meeting clay animator Bob Gardiner in

280-421: A "hot set," then no one is allowed to touch the set or else the shoot would be ruined. Certain scenes must be shot rather quickly. If a scene is left unfinished and the weather is perhaps humid, then the set and characters have an obvious difference. The clay puppets may be deformed from the humidity or the air pressure could have caused the set to shift slightly. These small differences can create an obvious flaw to

336-429: A Chair (1991), each would later spawned Hey Arnold! , a cel-animated series for Nickelodeon in 1996. The mid-1990s also saw Vinton adding computer animation to his output, used most visibly for his M&M's character commercials. A short CGI film, Fluffy , directed by Doug Aberle, was created during this time. Other CGI films—some combined with clay and stop-motion animation—soon followed. Vinton contributed to

392-399: A Staircase , filmed in 1992. Another Vinton animator, Craig Bartlett , developed a technique in which he not only used clay painting but sometimes built up clay images that rose off the plane of the flat support platform toward the camera lens to give a more 3-D stop-motion look to his Hey Arnold! films. Nick Park joined Aardman in 1985. Early in his career, he and Aardman helped make

448-712: A consumer-grade computer animation application called Playmation , developed by Hash, Inc., a computer animation company in Vancouver, Washington. Vinton and associates also dabbled in animation for the internet with a series called Ozzie the Elf . During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Vinton Studios produced the animated series The PJs for the FOX TV network. The series was conceived and executive-produced by actor and comedian Eddie Murphy . Another animated series

504-515: A distinctive visual style. Probably the most spectacular use of model animation for a computer game was for the Virgin Interactive Entertainment Mythos game Magic and Mayhem (1998), for which stop-motion animator and special-effects expert Alan Friswell constructed over 25 monsters and mythological characters utilising both modelling clay and latex rubber, over wire and ball-and-socket skeletons, much like

560-499: A drunk wino who stumbles into a closed art museum and interacts with the paintings and sculptures . Completed in late 1974 after 14 months of production, the film combined Gardiner's sculpting skills and comedy writing talent with Vinton's camera skills. Closed Mondays won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in the spring of 1975, the first film produced in Portland to do so. Vinton and Gardiner parted ways during

616-507: A flat surface and moved like wet oil paints (as on a traditional artist's canvas) to produce any style of images, but with a clay look to them. A sub variation claymation can be informally called "clay melting". Any kind of heat source can be applied on or near (or below) clay to cause it to melt while an animation camera on a time-lapse setting slowly films the process. For example, consider Vinton's early short clay-animated film Closed Mondays (co produced by animator Bob Gardiner ) at

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672-568: A handful of animators, Vinton produced a trilogy of 27-minute films of a short stories like fairy tales in the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as Martin the Cobbler (1977), the Oscar-nominated Rip Van Winkle (1978), and The Little Prince (1979). These films were later released theatrically under the umbrella title Trilogy , and later to video as The Little Prince and Friends . In 1978, Vinton produced

728-478: A new term for this process, Foamation . The studio also produced an unaired pilot for Slacker Cats in 2001. By the end of the 1990s, the Vinton studio, seeking funds for more feature-length films, had become big enough to bring in outside investors, which included Nike, Inc., founder Phil Knight and his son, Travis, who had worked at the studio as an animator. In spring of 2001, the studio's animated shows, The PJs and Gary and Mike , were cancelled, with

784-551: A recognizable character throughout a shot, as in Art Clokey 's and Will Vinton's films. One variation of claymation is strata-cut animation , in which a long bread-like loaf of clay, internally packed tight and loaded with varying imagery, is sliced into thin sheets, with the camera taking a frame of the end of the loaf for each cut, eventually revealing the movement of the internal images within. Pioneered in both clay and blocks of wax by German animator Oskar Fischinger during

840-512: A short sequence. J. Stuart Blackton 's Chew Chew Land; or, The Adventures of Dolly and Jim (1910) features primitive claymation in chewing-gum inspired dream scenes. Walter R. Booth 's Animated Putty (1911) featured clay molding itself into different shapes. Willie Hopkins produced over fifty clay-animated segments entitled Miracles in Mud for the weekly Universal Screen Magazine from 1916 to 1918. He also made artistic modeled titles for

896-515: A sitting old lady. On 15 February 1908, Porter released the trick film A Sculptor's Welsh Rabbit Dream that featured clay molding itself into three complete busts. No copy of the film has yet been located. It was soon followed by the similar extant film The Sculptor's Nightmare (6 May 1908), directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. and photographed by Billy Bitzer with cameo appearances of D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett . The busts are also animated to blink, speak, drink and turn left and right for

952-403: A viable animation material where a particular aesthetic is desired. Claymation can take several forms: "Freeform" claymation is an informal term referring to the process in which the shape of the clay changes radically as the animation progresses, such as in the work of Eli Noyes and Ivan Stang 's animated films. Clay can also take the form of "character" claymation, where the clay maintains

1008-399: A wire skeleton, called an armature, and then arranged on the set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand to prepare it for the next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired amount of film. Upon playback, the viewer perceives the series of slightly changing, rapidly succeeding images as motion. A consistent shooting environment is needed to maintain

1064-451: Is produced by recording each frame, or still picture, on film or digital media and then playing the recorded frames back in rapid succession before the viewer. These and other moving images, from zoetrope to films and video games , create the illusion of motion by playing back at over ten to twelve frames per second . Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material as plasticine , usually around

1120-537: The Moonlighting TV series (1987), and the opening & closing title sequences for the feature comedy film Brain Donors (1992). His company's animation effects for Disney 's Return to Oz (1985) were also nominated for a special effects Oscar. In May 1985, Will Vinton Productions released their first and only theatrical film The Adventures of Mark Twain . Following his work on Return to Oz , Vinton

1176-518: The Berkeley, California , area in the early 1970s, Vinton brought him to Portland and they commandeered Vinton's home basement to make a quick 1½-minute test film of clay animation (and the supporting armatures) called Wobbly Wino , completed in early 1973. Gardiner refined his sculpting and animation techniques while Vinton built a system for animating his Bolex Rex-5 16mm camera and they began work in mid-1973 on an 8-minute 16mm short film about

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1232-1061: The Chevron Cars ads (Aardman). The PJs (1999–2001) was a sitcom featuring the voice of Eddie Murphy , produced by Murphy in collaboration with Ron Howard , the Will Vinton Studios and others. Many independent young filmmakers have published claymations online, on such sites as Newgrounds . More adult-oriented claymation shows have been broadcast on Cartoon Network 's Adult Swim lineup, including Robot Chicken (which uses claymation and action figures as stop-motion puppets in conjunction) and Moral Orel . Nickelodeon 's Nick at Nite later developed their own adult show, Glenn Martin, DDS (2009-2011). Several computer games have been produced using claymation, including The Neverhood , ClayFighter , Platypus , Clay Moon (iPhone app), and Primal Rage . The surrealist role-playing video games Hylics (2015) and Hylics 2 (2020) both utilize claymation to achieve

1288-687: The M&;M's Red, Yellow, Blue, Green and Crispy (Orange) characters. The California Raisins' first big hit was the song " I Heard It Through the Grapevine " in the first of their series of TV spots for the California Raisin Advisory Board . They became such a media phenomenon that they went on to star in their own pair of primetime specials for CBS television, Meet the Raisins (1988), The Raisins Sold Out (1990), and

1344-411: The 1920s and 1930s, the technique was revived and highly refined in the mid-1990s by David Daniels, an associate of Will Vinton , in his 16-minute short film "Buzz Box". Another clay-animation technique, one that blurs the distinction between stop motion and traditional flat animation, is called clay painting (also a variation of the direct manipulation animation process), wherein clay is placed on

1400-637: The Blue (1976 - Italy) and Pingu (1990-2000 - Switzerland, 2003-2006 - U.K.) In 1972, at Marc Chinoy's Cineplast Films Studio in Munich, Germany, André Roche created a set of clay-animated German-language-instruction films (for non-German-speaking children) called Kli-Kla-Klawitter for the Second German TV-Channel; and another one for a traffic education series, Herr Daniel paßt auf ("Mr. Daniel Pays Attention"). Aardman Animations

1456-601: The Chevron Cars. On October 2, 2001, Chevron issued the limited edition Hope car to raise awareness about the fight for a cure for breast cancer and raised about $ 300,000 in donations. This has been followed by a new breast cancer awareness each October through 2007 with profits going to relevant charities. In 2007, Chevron began limited production of cars in association with major commercial sports and university teams based on their Victor E. Van car. On July 26, 2011, Chevron announced that due to decreasing consumer demand,

1512-610: The Portland branch of The Art Institutes and maintained an office there as an artist in residence. Vinton created a musical titled The Kiss , an adaptation of The Frog Prince with music by David Pomeranz that premiered on March 24, 2014, in Lake Oswego, Oregon . The Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills represented Vinton for production projects, which included a graphic novel called Jack Hightower produced in tandem with Dark Horse Comics . In 2006, Vinton

1568-601: The Were-Rabbit (2005). Wallace and Gromit spin-off Shaun the Sheep has also proved hugely successful with long-running television series (since 2007), theatrical movies and its own spin-off Timmy Time (since 2009). Aardman's Chicken Run (2000) became the highest-grossing stop motion animated film in history . Aardman's Flushed Away is a CGI replication of claymation. Alexander Tatarsky managed to get work at Multtelefilm division of Studio Ekran with

1624-576: The addition of stop tricks , and with early cinematic animation in Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906). A similar form of "lightning sculpting" had been performed live on stage around the turn of the century. Segundo de Chomón 's Sculpteur Moderne was released on 31 January 1908 and features heaps of clay molding themselves into detailed sculptures that are capable of minor movements. The final sculpture depicts an old woman and walks around before it's picked up, squashed and molded back into

1680-424: The award-winning animated video for Peter Gabriel 's song " Sledgehammer " in 1986. Park would become the most successful claymation director, receiving a total of six Academy Award nominations and winning four with Creature Comforts (1989) (the first Wallace and Gromit film A Grand Day Out was also nominated), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of

1736-438: The cars gets fitted with a bomb and explodes after asking questions about the ticking. Clay animation Claymation , sometimes called clay animation or plasticine animation , is one of many forms of stop-motion animation . Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay . Traditional animation , from cel animation to stop motion,

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1792-510: The cel method became the preferred method for the studio cartoon. Cel animation can be more easily divided into small tasks performed by many workers, like an assembly line. In 1921, claymation appeared in a short sequence in the Out of the Inkwell episode Modeling , a film from the newly formed Fleischer Brothers studio. Modeling included animated clay in eight shots, a novel integration of

1848-415: The designs of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen . Will Vinton William Gale Vinton (November 17, 1947 – October 4, 2018) was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for his Claymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such as The California Raisins . He won an Oscar for his work alongside several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for his studio's work. Vinton

1904-534: The documentary Claymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation a 17-minute film featuring the behind-the-scenes technical processes used. The term "claymation" was later trademarked by Vinton, and has become synonymous with clay animation in general. Graduating to 35mm film, Vinton produced other short films during this time: Legacy (1979), Dinosaur (1980), The Creation (directed by Joan Gratz , 1981, Oscar nominated), The Great Cognito (directed by Barry Bruce, 1982, Oscar nominated), A Christmas Gift , and

1960-463: The end of the computer sequence. A similar technique was used in the climax scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark to "melt" the face of one of the antagonists. The term "hot set" is used amongst animators during production. It refers to a set where an animator is filming. The clay characters are set in a perfect position where they can continue shooting where they left off. If an animator calls his set

2016-455: The figures for the frames; a full-length (90-minute) movie, 64,800—and possibly many more if some parts were shot with "singles" or "ones" (one frame exposed for each shot). The object must not be altered by accident, slight smudges, dirt, hair, or dust. Feature-length productions have generally switched from clay to rubber silicone and resin cast components: Will Vinton has dubbed one foam-rubber process "Foamation". Nevertheless, clay remains

2072-485: The help of Eduard Uspensky who wrote the screenplay for Tatarsky's first director's effort — Plasticine Crow (1981), which also happened to be Soviet first claymation film. After the enormous success Tatarsky was offered to create new opening and closing sequences for the popular children's TV show Good Night, Little Ones! also made of plasticine; they were later included into the Guinness Book of Records by

2128-615: The iconic character Gumby that would feature in segments in Howdy Doody in 1955 and 1956, and afterwards got his own television series (1957-1969, 1987-1989) and a theatrical film (1995). Clokey also produced Davey and Goliath (1960–2004) for the United Lutheran Church in America . Claymation has been popularized on television in children's shows such as Mio Mao (1970-1976, 2002-2007 - Italy), The Red and

2184-460: The illusion of continuity : objects must be consistently placed and lit. Producing a stop-motion animation using clay is extremely laborious. Normal film runs at 24 frames per second (frame/s). With the standard practice of "doubles" or "twos" (double-framing, exposing two frames for each shot), 12 changes are usually made for one second of film movement. Shooting a 30-minute movie would therefore require making approximately 21,600 stops to change

2240-510: The latter only airing 13 episodes. In 2002, Vinton lost control of the studio he founded after Knight became the majority shareholder and Vinton failed to garner funds for further feature production in Los Angeles, eventually being dismissed from the studio. Vinton later sought damages for this and sued for ownership of his name. In 2005, Will Vinton Studios was rebranded as Laika . Premiere stop-motion animator/director Henry Selick joined

2296-450: The movie Everywoman (1919). New York artist Helena Smith Dayton , possibly the first female animator, had much success with her "Caricatypes" clay statuettes before she began experimenting with claymation. Some of her first resulting short films were screened on 25 March 1917. She released an adaptation of William Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet circa half a year later. Although the films and her technique received much attention from

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2352-430: The music video Vanz Kant Danz (1987) for Creedence Clearwater Revival 's John Fogerty . VHS video compilations of these films were released in the 1980s as Festival of Claymation and Son of Combo II . Vinton, no longer performing animation himself, later produced special effects scenes for TV shows and movies, including a sequence for Bette Midler 's Divine Madness! movie (1980), an Emmy-winning sequence for

2408-478: The number of broadcasts. It was followed by two other claymation shorts: New Year's Eve Song by Ded Moroz (1982) and Last Year's Snow Was Falling (1983). Garri Bardin directed several claymation comedy films, including Break! , a parody on a boxing match for which Bardin received a Golden Dove award at the 1986 Dok Leipzig . Television commercials have utilized claymation, spawning for instance The California Raisins (1986-1998, Vinton Studios) and

2464-458: The original Chevron.com corporate website as well as numerous other web-based initiatives for the various Chevron operating companies. The Chevron Cars television ads have been parodied in several television shows, including Robot Chicken , the animated comedy Family Guy (episode " Deep Throats "), ' Futurama (episode " The Prince and the Product "), and a MADtv sketch in which one of

2520-566: The plasticine product would become the favourite product for clay animators, as it did not dry and harden (unlike normal clay) and was much more malleable than its harder and greasier Italian predecessor plasteline. Edwin S. Porter 's Fun in a Bakery Shop (1902) shows a single shot of a baker quickly transforming a patch of dough into different faces. It reflects the vaudeville type of "lightning sketches" that J. Stuart Blackton filmed in The Enchanted Drawing (1902) with

2576-577: The press, it seems she did not continue making films after she returned to New York from managing a YMCA in Paris around 1918. None of her films have yet surfaced, but the extant magazine articles have provided several stills and circa 20 poorly printed frames from two film strips. By the 1920s, drawn animation using either cels or the slash system was firmly established in the U.S. as the dominant mode of animation production. Increasingly, three-dimensional forms such as clay were driven into relative obscurity as

2632-428: The production of the Chevron Cars would be discontinued. This brought to an end a period of fifteen years in which they were produced and sold. The television ads were designed by advertising agency Young and Rubicam. The internet strategy, digital brand extension and the ecommerce component was created and managed by San Francisco web developer ISL Consulting, now part of ClearMetrics, Inc. ISL Consulting also developed

2688-632: The production of their second short film, Mountain Music completed by Vinton in 1976. Gardiner focused on producing PSA spots for local political issues (eventually evolving into other artistic media such as music and holograms) while Vinton established Will Vinton Productions (later Will Vinton Studios) in Portland to capitalize on the animation technology Gardiner had developed for their animated short Closed Mondays . Quickly expanding his studio by hiring new animators, Vinton produced dozens of commercials for regional and then national companies. Still with only

2744-418: The scene. To avoid these disasters, scenes normally have to be shot in one day or less. William Harbutt developed plasticine in 1897. To promote his educational "Plastic Method" he made a handbook that included several photographs that displayed various stages of creative projects. The images suggest phases of motion or change, but the book probably did not have a direct influence on claymation films. Still,

2800-517: The studio as a supervising director. The studio currently produces theatrical films such as Coraline , ParaNorman , The Boxtrolls , Kubo and the Two Strings , and Missing Link . Vinton later founded a new production facility, Will Vinton's Free Will Entertainment, also based in Portland. In 2005, Vinton produced The Morning After , the first short film under the new company. The film combines CGI and live action . He also taught at

2856-465: The technique into an existing cartoon series and one of the rare uses of claymation in a theatrical short from the 1920s. The oldest known extant claymation film (with claymation as its main production method) is Long Live the Bull (1926) by Joseph Sunn . Art Clokey 's short student film Gumbasia (1955) featured all kinds of clay objects changing shape and moving to a jazz tune. He also created

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2912-399: The toy cars featured in the commercials. Chevron underestimated demand in 1997 and increased production to 700,000 on each of 4 or 5 new models at the time, compared to 500,000 in the previous year. Although originally designed for children, Chevron executives were surprised that adults started collecting the toy plastic cars as well. Older adults are among the most enthusiastic collectors of

2968-593: Was born on November 17, 1947, to a car dealer father and a bookkeeper mother in McMinnville, Oregon. His paternal grandfather, William T. Vinton , was a well known state senator in Oregon, representing Portland. During the 1960s, Vinton studied physics, architecture and filmmaking at the University of California, Berkeley , where he was influenced by the work of Antoni Gaudí . During this time, Vinton made

3024-606: Was founded in 1972. In its early years, the studio mainly produced segments for television shows, with for instance the popular character Morph (appearing since 1977). Claymation has been used in Academy Award -winning short films such as Closed Mondays (Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner, 1974) and The Sand Castle (1977). Pioneering the clay painting technique was one-time Will Vinton Studios animator Joan Gratz , first in her Oscar-nominated film The Creation (1980), and then in her Oscar-winning Mona Lisa Descending

3080-680: Was hired by the Disney studio to produce animation effects for their Michael Jackson Disneyland - EPCOT Center film, Captain EO in 1986 and the Speed Demon music video for Michael Jackson's musical anthology feature-length film, Moonwalker (1988). Prominent among his hundreds of now international commercial creations were the California Raisins , the Domino's Pizza Noid , and

3136-616: Was produced for the UPN TV network by the Vinton studio, Gary and Mike . Gary and Mike was shot using digital video capture system developed for the production by two Vinton engineers Miegel Ginsberg and Gary McRobert. Both series used a refinement in Vinton's style of dimensional animation. Most of the clay figures were replaced by models of moulded foam rubber, eliminating many of the limitations, and maintenance issues, that are inherent with clay, which had been developed by Vinton and his technical teams as far as it could go. Vinton soon coined

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