Marq Evans ClayDream

Will Vinton coined the name Claymation and was a pioneer in combining clay animated characters with stop motion.

CLAYDREAM is a new documentary about Will Vinton and his studio who produced such classics as the California Raisins, several feature films and TV shows, reinventing the M&Ms characters and The Noid, which is returning to the advertising world.

Below is my Animateducated interview with Marq Evans and his new documentary about Will Vinton. The film premieres online Sunday, June 13th @ 4pm pst.

Here is the link for the Tribeca premiere screening: https://tribecafilm.com/films/claydream-2021

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Check out this post about Daniel Lopez Munoz

Mosleying Along

Back in the 90's, Kirby Atkins was a High School teacher who applied to Will Vinton Studios in Portland and was hired into the world of animation. Soon he was getting paid to learn more about CG animation while working as a CG Animator on various M&M commercials the studio was producing at the time. 

When the studio had downtime in between commercials, Kirby developed his own animated short called "Mutt", about a Dog comedian telling dog jokes to other dogs, in which he wrote the dialogue, animated, modeled, lit and even did the main character's voice. The film went on to win several awards at film festivals, including the Hollywood Film Festival.

Atkins also began a very personal short film called "Beast of Burden" about an intelligent creature which was used to pull a plow even though he could talk and tried to reason with his owner. It was a very dark and epic like idea which Kirby kept working on and developing after he left Vinton and began working for other animation studios.

Kirby develop the story into an animatic and recorded himself performing the voice of Mosley and his 7 year old daughter playing Mosley's small daughter Rue. 

20 years in the making, "Mosley" was released in New Zealand in 2019 and is only now finally making its way around the world to US. Recently the film was shown at the Annecy animation festival in France in July and is on its way to the Ottawa animation film festival and the Burbank International Film Festival in September. 

Take a look and listen to this very informative interview!

Upcoming Interviews with Ron Husband, Raft Animation and Ron Clements and John Musker! 

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Claymation Man: Will Vinton

Many would agree that Will Vinton was to Claymation, what Walt Disney was to Animation.

It all began with, "Closed Mondays" the first clay animated film that Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner created together which won an Academy Award in 1975.

Their second film,"Mountain Music" lead to Vinton and Gardiner parting ways and soon Will Vinton Studios began making other films including, Martin the Cobbler (1977), Rip Van Winkle (1978) and The Little Prince (1979). 

Every year a new claymation film was produced and soon Vinton entered into working on TV commercials and winning awards. The most successful ad campaign was for The California Raisins, which lead to several independent projects for Michael Jackson. Below is a compilation of Vinton's California Raisin commercials as well as other behind the scenes interviews on other commercials. 

 

Here's a collection of stories from a few people who worked at the Vinton Studio during the M&M commercials, The PJs and Gary and Mike TV series.

https://soundcloud.com/user-444046006/will-vinton-claymation-man

Here's a rescued Raisin armature made of wood, bendable lead wire encased in shrink wrap rubber for arms and legs with a pair of solid Sculpey shoes.

One of the first M&Ms commercials featured the voices of Jon Lovitz and John Goodman. This was the first commercial where I animated both Red & Yellow. Watch for the scene where they are tied up and struggling to break free.

I animated Yellow in the Xmas M&Ms spot as well as Green when she's naked in her trailer.

 

The director wanted to make sure the actor would give an appropriate reaction of seeing a nude M&M. So they posted a bunch of porn magazine images all around the camera. As the PA stumbled into Green's trailer, the actor was surprised to see the collection of pornography displayed in front of him and it worked.

In 2002, Vinton's studio changed ownership and here is a very accurate account of what happened in this article called "How the father of Claymation lost his company."

Since posting this, a documentary called ClayDream about the life and career of Will Vinton. You can also learn about the film in an interview below...

Here's a great "Making of" article about the Claymation process from Step By Step magazine, March/April 1987

Here's a rare interview with Bob Gardiner, who worked with Will Vinton on "Closed Mondays" 

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Next time: Mike Owens, Animation Director.