History of Clay Animation: Part 2

July 13, 2000 -- When experimental filmmaking “busted out” in the 1960s and early ’70s, clay animation was not immune to the change. But with the changes came questions about just what constitutes “clay” animation.

In 1971, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences widened its “Best Short Subject” category from “Cartoon” to “Animated Film,” and that cleared the big clay road.

Three years later, filmmaker Will Vinton, influenced by the flowing clay forms of the Spanish architect Gaudi, won that Oscar, in collaboration with his friend Bob Gardiner, for Closed Mondays.

Not Just for Kids

And the plot was certainly not the usual kiddie fare. “It was the story of a wino wandering into an art museum,” says Vinton.

A lot of other animators were taking their cue from cel animation, which used the film frame like a theatrical stage. But filmmaking was evolving, and Vinton decided to take advantage of those changes in Closed Mondays. “Cuts, extreme close-ups, dramatic camera angles hadn’t been made use of in animation.” He figured it was time.

Vinton soon completed the world’s first feature-length clay animation, The Adventures of Mark Twain. He calls the 72-minute film “the zenith of pure clay animation: 100 percent clay. We were purists in those days.”

But while clay had begun to distinguish itself as more than an expensive cousin of cel animation, Vinton recalls that Mark Twain “never found its audience.”

So Much Larger Than Life

While Vinton remains proud of such high-brow fare, his production company is best known for the California Raisins commercial, which featured dried fruit grooving to the beat of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

“I knew it would be a great ad campaign, a fun idea, but I had no idea it’d be a phenomena,” says Vinton. “I still get introduced as the Raisin King.”

Recent decades have produced an innovative proliferation of pure clay in the service of cutting-edge TV programs as well as commercials and music videos. Frank Zappa’s 1979 Baby Snakes capitalized on clay’s inherent characteristics, such as sagging and stretching, which other animators find troubling.

In 1968, Joan Gratz began painting with clay and used her innovative technique in a 1990 United Airlines commercial. In 1992, she won an Oscar for her seven-minute short Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase.

Clay had some memorable moments in the ’80s. Vinton Studios won an Emmy in 1987 for clay portraits of stars Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis on the hit series Moonlighting. Pee-wee’s Playhouse commisioned Aardman to create the late 1980s Penny Cartoon series, then animator David Daniels in 1987 for a pair of short using his “strata” technique.

Daniels is also known for his 1987 video Big Time for singer Peter Gabriel. Meanwhile, Gabriel (on his award-winning Sledgehammer video), Bette Midler and the Spice Girls all utilized clay — and the talents of Aardman — to make their music visually unforgettable.

Even Gumby became a rock star. Gumby 1 — requiring $3.2 million and 30 months of shooting, starting in 1989, Art Clokey’s 87-minute project is fun and faithful to the original. But the world’s second pure clay feature went straight to video.

Heavy-Duty Cheat

The famous Saturday Night Live feature Mr. Bill does not belong to this survey in a technical sense. But it bears mentioning because it is an extreme example of other changes in the world of clay.

Mr. Bill is made of Play-doh, not clay, and isn’t animated. “It’s a heavy-duty cheat,” says Michael Frierson, author of the 1994 book Clay Animation: American Highlights,1908 to the Present. “It’s running the camera in real time. There’s no comparison.”

But filmmaker Walter Williams says his Mr. Bill is relevant because it is a parody of animation. “I got the idea while watching one of the newer versions of the Popeye cartoons and thinking there was so little movement compared to the original cartoon animation … next you’ll be seeing the hands moving the character around … then accidentally dropping him.”

So Williams got his big break via SNL’s home movie contest, and kept producing for the show until 1980, when the original cast left. A 15th anniversary SNL survey found Mr. Bill’s popularity was exceeded only by that of the late John Belushi and Gilda Radner.

The Mr. Bill Collection of videos sold better than any other SNL compilation. As Mr.Hands tortured and maimed Mr. Bill throughout the late 1970s, his falsetto cries of “Oh Noooooooo” became a household word.

Certainly Mr. Bill is not clay animation, but what about film like 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas? Like the films of Ray Harryhausen, discussed in Part One of this history, Tim Burton’s film utilized clay as one of many techniques but was billed as "stop-animation." Like George Pal’s Puppetoons and even Chicken Run, Nightmare used molded “replacement parts” that are swapped for others as needed, as opposed to re-shaping plasticine as the action develops in pure clay animation.

“Each frame is sculpted.” Will Vinton explains, “It’s very tedious, very realistic. It is extraordinarily expressive because it doesn’t repeat and recycle mouth shapes, for instance.”

But when a film like Nightmare earns $50 million at the box office and another $22 million in rentals, with Chicken Run gaining fast, Hollywood is taking notice and purity matters less.

Look No Further

Today one does not need to look far to find direct descendants of clay animation. Latex figures of Elvis Presley, Bruce Lee and Frank Sinatra sell Brisk Ice Tea. The PJs, created by Vinton Studios, is a current series.

Then there is Celebrity Deathmatch. It premiered in the fall of 1997 as a fantasy fight between Charles and Marilyn Manson on MTV, then moved to a Super Bowl halftime special, Deathbowl 98. Now, it’s a weekly show on the cable network. Each episode features three bouts of today’s hottest celebrities up against each other in a violent clay slugfest that marries Mr.Bill’s spirit with the technology of Gumby.

Still, the ’90s in clay animation belonged to Aardman, which blazes few new trails in terms of technique but delights young and old with its ability to tell a story. That’s the case with Nick Park and Peter Lord’s new film, Chicken Run.

“It is the first stop-motion animation movie made in the Aaardman style … which is unique,” says Dreamworks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg, the film’s executive producer. “There’s nothing else like it in the world.”

“I’m happy for Nick and Peter that Dreamworks has gotten behind it,” says Vinton of Chicken Run. “Mark Twain missed its true market. And animation suffers for that. For a long time Disney was the only one who knew how to market animation. We’ll see what Dreamworks can do.”

Whether Dreamwork’s marketing or just the charm of the Aardman characters, someone is doing something right. And clay animation is ready for its close-up.