Claymation
Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material as plasticine, usually around 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.
Feature-length productions have generally switched from clay to rubber silicone and resin cast components: Will Vinton has dubbed one foam-rubber process "Foamation".
Pioneered in both clay and blocks of wax by German animator Oskar Fischinger during 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".
[5] 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 the end of the computer sequence.
[6] 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 the addition of stop tricks, and with early cinematic animation in Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906).
[6] Segundo de Chomón's Sculpteur Moderne was released on 31 January 1908[7] and features heaps of clay molding themselves into detailed sculptures that are capable of minor movements.
[8] On 15 February 1908, Porter released the trick film A Sculptor's Welsh Rabbit Dream that featured clay molding itself into three complete busts.
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.
[14] 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.
Modeling included animated clay in eight shots, a novel integration of the technique into an existing cartoon series and one of the rare uses of claymation in a theatrical short from the 1920s.
[19] Art Clokey's short student film Gumbasia (1955) featured all kinds of clay objects changing shape and moving to a jazz tune.
Claymation has been popularized on television in children's shows such as Mio Mao (1970-1976, 2002-2007 - Italy), The Red and 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").
Television commercials have utilized claymation, spawning for instance The California Raisins (1986-1998, Vinton Studios) and the Chevron Cars ads (Aardman).
Several computer games have been produced using claymation, including The Neverhood, ClayFighter, Platypus, Clay Moon (iPhone app), and Primal Rage.
[26] 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 the designs of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen.
