Vince Backeberg's FAQ:Claymation

I've continually go through my archived e-mail to review which are truly the most "Frequently Asked Questions". So this page includes actual questions I've received and the answers given.

There are many good supply houses out there. But first I would suggest checking your local phonebook under art and ceramic supplies. Many cities have this stuff in town, without having to send out for mail order. (Look under Art and Ceramic supplies.)Vinton's used a plasticine from Van Aken and is selling their own under the Claymation® name. They also used a lot of Sculpey for small props because of it's resemblance to clay, and the fact that once baked, it was rigid and un-melting under set lights.

How do you keep the clay clean? How do you keep small props from being squished or deformed during a shot?

When Vinton's does Claymation, they still use Van Aken clay. The dirty little secret about Claymation is that the animators can sometimes spend more time cleaning up the clay than moving the characters from frame to frame. If you look at old Claymation you'll notice that a lot of times bright light colors are avoided, since they show dirt and grime more than something like say, the California Raisin purple. If you are using a very dark color and light color next to each other, say white shirt with black pants you might want to use two sets of sculpting tools to help avoid the contamination of the two colors.

Of course the biggest secret in Claymation is to not use clay at all.
The PJ's characters are foam latex puppets with a light weight
plastic head built on top of a traditional ball and socket armature. The facial parts are cast wax and just a little clay for the eyelids or brows.
The foam and plastic parts are sculpted and painted to look like clay however. Vinton's is now calling this process "Foamation". But it still stop-motion.

The other trick is the extensive use of Sculpey. Vinton's started using
it around 1987 for things that have to look like clay, but never move.
For instance the raisins shoes, ties, small props, etc. The advantage
is that they won't distort and won't contaminate other clay colors. If
you have a hard time finding a variety of different Sculpey colors, you
can take two different colors of Sculpey and knead them together until they blend into a new color. You can also paint baked Sculpey with cel paints. Cel paint dries to a look very similar to clay.

At Vinton's, some people used water to smooth their sculptures. One guy even used to lick his fingertips then smooth the clay. (cue creepy music here)The preferred method was to use mineral oil. What you do is get a paper towel and plastic 35mm film holder(the small kind, like the film you use in your average camera, not a big film canister)

Take the paper towel and fold it so it's a little more narrow than the
film canister is tall. Then roll it up tightly and push it into the
canister. Pour in mineral oil and let it soak into the paper. But not
to much, you want the oil to soak into the paper but not be enough to
run out. Then when you need to smooth out tool marks on Van Aken clay, take a brush and brush across the surface of the oil soaked paper. This will give you a very small amount of oil on the brush. You can start smoothing with a stiffer synthetic brush and finish up with a
finer camels hair brush. This will depend on how much clean up you have to do. When not using the oil, put the lid back on it.

I have to point out that the sculpting tools varied widely from animator to animator. Usually animators would make them to suit their own particular style of sculpting.

If you look at the picture, the tools on top were made from a product called Friendly Plastic. You can find it in many craft stores. It softens at low temperatures(near boiling water works) and you can shape it into a variety of forms. I like it because you can easily make very organically shaped tools that would be very difficult to create from wood or metal. If you look closely at the first one you will notice that it has a flat shape on one end, and a rounded sphere shape on the other. There's a reason for this. When you are animating on a cramped set where you have to reach in to

sculpt your character it can be a pain in the neck to swap tools. If you make commonly used tools like this you can flip it around in your hand instead of putting it down and picking up a second tool.

The second set are made from a high density polypropylene plastic. These can be polished with very fine grit sandpaper(1200). These are great for pressing wrinkles and folds into clay clothes, especially at the joints inside the arms. If you are lucky you can find a plastic supply house in your town to find this material. And if you are really lucky, you can get it for free. One afternoon a few of us at Vinton's went to a local supplier and they gave us some scraps. One 'scrap' was a three foot long piece that had some minor surface imperfections.

The third set are common clay tools you can find at any sculpting or
pottery supply house. They originally had sharp ends on them, they were filed down, rounded off and polished on a buffing wheel. This is the only tool that almost every animator had a variation of. In fact, these were the very first customized tools I made while at Vinton's.

The last is a stainless steel dental sculpting tool. Dental supply
houses have a wide variety of tools that are perfect for clay.

I bought some Van Aken clay and it seems a bit crumbly. What's wrong with this stuff?

One of the little secrets of Claymation is that the clay Vinton's uses
is aged at least two years prior to using it in production. We had a
hell of a problem about the time of the second Raisin special because a lot of the 'aged' clay was long gone and we had to use the crumbly new stuff. They tried a lot of things; adding tiny amounts of mineral oil
to the melting clay.... but that had limited success.

Van Aken clays will melt at relatively low temperatures. You can do this with a double boiler over a low heat. The studio would sometime use small pans in a large electric fry pan half filled with water. The small pan would sit on a coil of wired to keep it from touching the surface of the hot electric pan. If you know your color wheel, you can get an amazing array of color variations.

But I have to tell you, NEVER melt clay in a pot that is directly in contact with a hotplate or stove top burner. The clay will quickly melt and then burn. Although listed as "non-toxic", the Material Safety Data Sheet advises that firefighters working in an environment were this is burning must wear breathing apparatus. And DON'T try to melt other types of plasticine. Roma plastilina contains sulfur and should never me melted.

Vinton's uses(d) 16mm Bolex cameras customized to shoot single
frames for the tv specials and short films. The commercials were and are shot using modified 35mm Mitchell's.

The story goes that years ago the studio got a deal on some government surplus used Mitchell 35mm cameras. (Cue the X-Files music) Supposedly they were originally used to film nuclear bomb tests in Nevada. They were supposedly checked for residual radiation. These were originally live action cameras that had to be modified to shoot single frames.

Vinton's has it's own electronics and machine shops, so this work was done in house. I'm not sure what it would cost to have these modifications made, but it wouldn't be cheap. You might be able to find a camera at a pawn shop or flea market. Some cities occasionally have camera and photography swap meets. I remember an animator at Vinton's once running across a very rare to find 16mm Mitchell for around $400. Happy hunting and good luck.

I recently received a list of sources from animator/director Webster Colcord (who also worked at Will Vinton's Productions and is now at PDI). The sources are:

Chambless Cine Equipment
13368 Chatsworth Hwy
Ellijay, GA 30540-9723
(706)-636-5210
"America's premiere Bolex dealer" as it says on their advertisements,
they have most Bolex accessories but at very high prices.

Meritex
Oakland, CA
(510) 534-9018
Used to be J-K Engineering, builds optical printers, stop motion motor
controls, and also has some big ball and socket joints that sell for
about $10 a joint in brass and aluminum.

Alan Gordon Enterprises
http://www.A-G-E.com
(213) 466-3561

IIE
(214) 696-0501
capbli@cyberramp.net

International Cinema Equipment Company
http://www.ICECO.com
(305) 573-7339
Miami, Florida

Lloyd's Camera Exchange
(213) 467-7189
(213) 467-3863

DeMott/Kreines Films
contact: Jeff Kreines
(334) 285-6179
email: JKreines@aol.com

Les Day (has several 16mm Mitchell's in the $2,000-$3,000 range)
(209) 227-1847

Probably the cheapest option would be a Super 8mm camera. I have a Nikon R8 that shoots single frame and used it quite a bit when I was in school. They also made an R10, the main difference being a longer zoom lens. You may be able to find one at a flea market or pawn shop.
Unfortunately, they are almost impossible to find since video came along in the 80's and virtually wiped out the Super 8mm film market.

I received an e-mail a while back from a middle school student who used a Video Snappy to capture frames from a video camera. I'm not aware of a particular model of video camera that shoots single frames reliably, but if someone knows of one, I will list it here.

Recently I've been hearing a lot of good things about Stop Motion Pro, a software package that lets you take single frames and assemble them into animation.

First, if you are going to do lip sync you will have to have a camera
capable of single frame exposure. Lip sync is very precise animation. As a quick example I'll show how typical commercial shot is done.

How it's done is really pretty simple. First off you start with the
reference film and sound track. Vinton's would shoot 16mm reference footage and record sound in the studio of actors performing the dialogue and action. The director and editor will cut all of the shots together forming a temporary cut of the commercial.

Then the director will sit down with the animator at an editing bay and 'log' the shot. Animators use what is known as a logsheet. It is divided into numbered columns running top to bottom. These are to note on which frame an action, or word of dialogue begins and ends. One column will be for the dialogue, another for the right arm, left arm, etc. So if the line is, "Drop the Chalupa". You will know that the word 'D' starts on say frame 12 and ends on frame 19. Then the 'T' of 'the' starts on frame 24. You also note on the logsheet related facial expressions and gestures.

Logging the shot is completed by running through the footage over and over again, one frame at a time until all the actions are plotted out. This will insure that the dialogue will exactly sync up with the sound.

Once the shot is logged, the animator will refer to this during the actual animation. In many cases you will also have a film or video clip of the reference film to use to follow during the animation process. Along with the logsheet the animator will have a small mirror to double check facial expressions and the mouth positions made during the dialogue. This is why animated characters often times take on the expressions of their animators.

A bit of triia. Many animators who have worked for years doing a lot of lip sync are pretty fair lip readers.

In the old days(the 80's), they made characters jump by suspending them on either thin wire or monofilament. You need to build a rig that will let you attach as many lines as needed (2-4) and connect them to your model. These things resemble the rigs used for puppets on a string. Each line is attached to the rig on something like an adjustable knob. Imagine an object tied to a string that is tied on the other end to a round dowel rod(like a pencil). If you hold the pencil in your hand and rotate it, you raise and lower the object on the other end of the string. If you have a number of lines attached to your character or object, you can vary the pitch and yaw. Useful when making character jump and fly.

Vinton's rarely does this any more. They will use very sturdy armatured support rods that are digitally removed in post production. Once again, something that is very expensive. You'll probably have to use monofilament. I've done it, and it really is a pain. See my page for
the story on Dole Cherry Hell., and good luck.

Are there any books you recommend on clay animation? Are there any websites with how-to information?

There is a great website called "Marc Spess's Clay Animation How-To Website" that has a lot of good information on getting started in clay animation. Check it out.

You should also get your hands on any of the animation books by Preston Blair. You will find these in the library of almost every professional animator and studio.

There's a new book on clay animation you might want to check out. It's all about Aardman Studios and has a lot of cool behind the scenes photos. There's a great section on simple armatures and a couple of pages on walk/run cycles.

The full title is "Creating 3-D Animation: The Aardman book of Filmmaking" by Peter Lord and Brian Sibley, ISBN 0-8109-1996-6. If you can't find it in a local bookstore you should be able to get it from Amazon.com. The suggested retail price is around $30, it should be a little less at Amazon.

I ran across a really good book that covers the history of clay animated film called "Clay Animation: American Highlights 1908 to Present" by Michael Frierson. While not a "how-to" book, it is a valuable reference for anyone who wants an overview of the history of clay animation. Includes chapters on Will Vinton Studios and the king of the strata-cut, Dave Daniels.

There are many ways to make an armature for clay models. You can start with something as simple as a twisted aluminum wire armature(see the Aardman book), or go all out and build a full-blown ball and socket armature. The latter is something you would have to have custom made by someone with a machine shop.

For those of you on a budget, don't overlook the possibilities at your local toy store. Many animators I worked with at Vinton's did their first animation with characters built on top of GI Joe's and other articulated action toys and figures. There are even a couple of toys that are practically armatures to begin with. K'NEX and the ZOOB line of toys are basicly armatures.

I spent many years as a 'claymator' at Will Vinton Studios, and I never animated a character that used wire or any other armature in the fingers. That's not to say it was never done, but the characters were usually small enough that hands didn't require wire to support the fingers. Basically the typical hand was a small piece of wood or hard foam,(usually small enough to fit in the palm of the hand) or a small coil of wire(enough for the clay to stick to) with a lead wire epoxied into a square piece of brass. This would plug into a slightly bigger diameter of brass forming the wrist joint.

The biggest trick we used was to have a series of replacement hands
sculpted in dynamic poses. ( a fist, a pointing finger, etc) And since many of the clay hands came out of a mold, you could replace hands that were being trashed in the middle of a shot without to much trouble.

At Vinton's the characters averaged between 6" to 8" tall. This will vary from project to project. It may also be necessary to have figures in multiple scales depending on the shots.

A little bit of everything. A lot are made of brass and lead and we sometimes used Styrofoam to fill out a character without adding a great deal of weight. When I was a kid doing animation with an old 8mm camera, I used old G.I. JOE action figures. And not the little puny ones made in the 80's, but the big Joe's from the Sixties. ( I still have my first Joe from 1965) I made an Ymir from Ray Harryhausen's "20 Million Miles to Earth", and a Cyclops from "The 7thVoyage of Sinbad", by sculpting wax onto the figures. A very crude technique, but it was a start. And I found out that many of the clay animators at Vinton's did exactly the same thing.

I was mostly self taught up until I went to work for Will Vinton Studios. Then it was," learn on the job", under the pressure of big-time commercial deadlines. Working on personal or school/university projects are good training, but the real learning comes from solving problems for real, on the job, with a deadline hanging over your head.

While at WVP, I was able to work with and learn from some of the most talented animators in the country. If you enter this field you will find out that like most professions, you will constantly be learning new techniques.

I was self taught, then learned while I earned at Will Vinton studios. I had always studied art in school, and took a variety of art and film classes in college. Many Will Vinton animators were self taught before moving onto Vinton's, while some others attended universities such as the prestigious Cal Arts.

I know of people working professionally in animation that only have their high school diploma. Others have Bachelor and Masters degrees in art or computer science. It really depends on who is hiring. I like to use the analogy of an animator to actor. An actor could have taken years worth of acting classes, voice lessons, dance, martial arts, etc..... but the bottom line is, do they have natural talent and ability? The same holds true for animation. You can spend years and thousands of dollars on courses and school , but you have to have that weird ability/talent to bring a character to life, one frame at a time.

And I will let you in on an old showbiz cliche, "It's not what you know, but who you know". There is more than a grain of truth to that statement in that it's easier to get your foot in the door if you know where the door is. It is also helpful to have references from other people in the industry. For example, once I was employed there, I recommended two very talented animators (who were friends of mine) when additional jobs were available. They both got the jobs and are still working professionly in animation to this day.

But don't let this discourage you. I originally cold-called Will Vinton's without knowing anyone in the company. They weren't hiring at the time and even told me that turn over was so rare that new positions were not available. Over a period of about eighteen months, I repeatedly sent them a resume along with a series of updated pictures. Eventually they were busy enough to need an additional animator/model builder and by regularly keeping in touch, the were somewhat familiar with me and my ability. (Keep in mind that there is a pretty clear line between a sincere and serious effort at gaining a job, and being a pest. )

At the time they brought me onboard they had a two part interview process. (this was late 1986) I went down to the studio to talk to one of the producers, and get a box of clay. This was clay was for the second part of the interview.... the audition piece. They had animators with a wide variety of backgrounds, and the audition piece was to see that new potential animators could sculpt in the Claymation®style. I sculpted a caricature of Jim Morrison of the DOORS, as a door. When I brought it in to show them I had the seoncd and final part of my interview with Will Vinton and general manager David Altschul. I lucked out because Will was a big DOORS fan and really liked the sculpture. I got the job.

That depends. It can be as low as nothing if you are working on a speculative project or your own personal project. Or all the way to six figures, if you are a director on a major feature length animated film. And of course, the grandslam homerun is an animator/cartoonist who creates a character or characters that becomes a tv series with multitude of spin-off merchandising. Can you say, "The Simpson's"?

There is obviously a huge span in there. Back in 1987, Will Vinton Studios hired apprentice animators at $1000 a month. This was a starting wage for the duration of one of the TV specials. After the special was completed, animators were then evaluated on an individual basis and paid accordingly. Back to the actor analogy, your pay will probably be based on your talent,productivity and track record.

A wide variety of things. I started working on rubber molds for characters, putting together displays for the lobby and building armatures. ( I had previously worked in a machine shop). Just sort of odds and ends in the beginning. I even helped build some walls in the place.

This was before the first TV special was to begin and before the first apprenticeship program. My first animation was for the CBS TV Special, "A Claymation Christmas Celebration", animating raisins. I did the shots of the raisins pulling the Christmas sleigh and flying across the night sky. I worked with Tony Merrithew on a couple shots of the raisins outside the nightclub. I also worked on WVP's first computer animation effort for a commercial on Chips Ahoy!. To see the whole list of projects I worked on while at Vinton's , see my Claymation® Filmography.

They are located at 1400 NW 22nd, Portland, Oregon 97210. And they are listed in the phone directory.

Well, to do that you'd need Will's Mad Dog Chicken Barbeque sauce recipe. And you're in luck, you can get in right here.

Go directly to the source, Will Vinton Studio's. They have a company store that sells most of their animation. And if you order something, tell them I sent you there.

Family Home Entertainment: 1-800-326-1997
Whole Toon Catalog:1-800-331-6197
Movies Unlimited: 1-800-523-0823

Many people think that Will Vinton was the inventor of clay animation. He first used clay in the 1970's short film "Closed Mondays" and later registered the name "Claymation". But clay had been an animation medium for decades. It appears that one of the very first animators to use clay as an animation medium was Willis O'Brien, creator of King Kong. The following excerpt is from CINEFEX magazine number 7, page 9

"Determined to follow through on his idea, O'Brien engaged the assistance of a newsreel photographer and set out to shoot a brief one minute test film atop the Bank of Italy building in downtown San Francisco. First he fashioned miniature dinosaur and caveman from modeling clay shaped over crude wooden skeletons and then placed the figures in a makeshift setting fabricated from small bits of rock. His prehistoric diorama thus prepared, Willis set up the camera and exposed a single frame of film. Then he moved the dinosaur and caveman slightly and exposed another frame. The movement of each arm, leg or head was sometimes no more than an eighth of an inch at a time, and it proved to be slow tedious work, especially since the malleable miniatures had to be remodeled after nearly every frame. The results were somewhat jerky but the unique illusion of movement served to interest a local exhibitor, Herman Wobber, who saw the reel in the summer of 1915. Wobber, a ten-year veteran of the Alaskan gold rush days and a former partner in a printing and stationary firm, had gotten his start in the infant film business in 1906, opening the first nickelodeon in downtown San Francisco after the great earthquake and fire had devastated much of the city."

So there you go. It looks like 1915 is the first recorded professional use of clay animation.

I do. I use Microsoft's FrontPageand Macromedia's Dreamweaver software as well as all the typical graphics programs. (i.e. Photoshop,Image Ready,etc.)

I am located somewhere in the rainy and cold greater metropolitan Portland area. That's Portland, Oregon not Portland, Maine.

It's the hometown of Henry M. Phillips, the inventor of the Phillips head screwdriver, Tanya Harding,Olympic skater and semi-pro boxer,and most importantly to animation fans, creator of "The Simpson's" Matt Groening.

Plus rain, lots of rain. I thought you should know that. Oh yeah, more rain.