![]() "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 clay animation in a theatrical short from the 1920s. "Modeling" is one of the few known shorts using clay that was released during the 1920s. Nevertheless, in 1921, clay animation appeared in a film called "Modeling", an Out of the Inkwell film from the newly formed Fleischer Brothers studio. Increasingly, three-dimensional forms such as clay were driven into relative obscurity as the cel method became the preferred method for the studio cartoon. By the 1920s, cartoon animation using either cels or the slash system was firmly established as the dominant mode of animation production. Hopkins in particular was quite prolific, producing over fifty clay-animated segments for the weekly Universal Screen Magazine. In 1916, clay animation became something of a fad, as an East Coast artist named Helena Smith Dayton and a West Coast animator named Willie Hopkins produced clay-animated films on a wide range of subjects. To avoid these disasters, scenes normally have to be shot in one day or less.Ĭlay-animated films were produced in the United States as early as 1908, when Edison Manufacturing released a trick film entitled The Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream (possibly referencing the comic strip "Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend"). These small differences can create an obvious flaw to the scene. The clay puppets may be deformed from the humidity or the air pressure could have caused the set to shift slightly. If a scene is left unfinished and the weather is perhaps humid, then the set and characters have an obvious difference. Certain scenes must be shot rather quickly. If an animator calls his set a "hot set," then no one is allowed to touch the set or else the shoot would be ruined. The clay characters are set in a perfect position where they can continue shooting where they left off. It refers to a set where an animator is filming. The term "hot set" is used amongst animators during production. A similar technique was used in the climax scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark to "melt" the faces of the antagonists. 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. 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. 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".Īnother 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 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.Ī sub variation clay animation can be informally called "clay melting". One variation of clay animation 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. Clay can also take the form of "character" clay animation, where the clay maintains a recognizable character throughout a shot, as in Art Clokey's and Will Vinton's films. "Freeform" clay animation 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 Eliot Noyes, Jr.
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