Will Vinton

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Will Vinton
Vinton in 2015
Born
William Gale Vinton

(1947-11-17)November 17, 1947
McMinnville, Oregon, U.S.
DiedOctober 4, 2018(2018-10-04) (aged 70)
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Occupations
  • Animator
  • filmmaker
  • editor
  • screenwriter
  • voice actor
Years active1969–2008
Children3

William Gale Vinton (November 17, 1947 – October 4, 2018)[1] was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for his Claymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such as The California Raisins. He won an Oscar for his work[2] alongside several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for his studio's work.

Life and education

Vinton was born on November 17, 1947, to a car dealer father and a bookkeeper mother in McMinnville, Oregon.[3] His paternal grandfather, William T. Vinton, was a well known state senator in Oregon, representing Portland.[citation needed]

During the 1960s, Vinton studied physics,

feature-length documentary film about the California counter-culture movement titled Gone for a Better Deal, which toured college campuses in various film festivals of the time. Two more films about student protest followed, Berkeley Games and First Ten Days, as well a narrative short Reply, and his first animation, Culture Shock.[5]

Vinton received his bachelor's degree in architecture from UC Berkeley in 1970.[6]

Career

Collaboration with Bob Gardiner

Meeting clay animator

Closed Mondays won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in the spring of 1975, the first film produced in Portland to do so.[7][8]

Vinton and Gardiner parted ways during the production of their second short film, Mountain Music completed by Vinton in 1976. Gardiner focused on producing PSA spots for local political issues (eventually evolving into other artistic media such as music and holograms) while Vinton established Will Vinton Productions (later Will Vinton Studios) in Portland to capitalize on the animation technology Gardiner had developed for their animated short Closed Mondays. Quickly expanding his studio by hiring new animators, Vinton produced dozens of commercials for regional and then national companies.

Will Vinton Studios

Will Vinton Studios
Company typeAnimation Studio
IndustryFilm, Entertainment, Advertising
Founded1975
FounderWill Vinton
Defunct2005
FateDefunct
SuccessorsFree Will Entertainment
Laika
HeadquartersPortland, Oregon

Going solo

Still with only a handful of animators, Vinton produced a

clay animation
in general.

35mm years

Graduating to

Joan Gratz, 1981, Oscar nominated),[13] The Great Cognito (directed by Barry Bruce, 1982, Oscar nominated), A Christmas Gift, and the music video Vanz Kant Danz (1987) for Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty.[14] VHS
video compilations of these films were released in the 1980s as Festival of Claymation and Son of Combo II.

Vinton, no longer performing animation himself, later produced special effects scenes for TV shows and movies, including a sequence for

Disney's Return to Oz (1985) were also nominated for a special effects Oscar. In May 1985, Will Vinton Productions released their first and only theatrical film The Adventures of Mark Twain
.

Following his work on Return to Oz, Vinton was hired by the Disney studio to produce animation effects for their

EPCOT Center film, Captain EO in 1986 and the Speed Demon music video for Michael Jackson's musical anthology feature-length film, Moonwalker
(1988).

Prominent among his hundreds of now international commercial creations were the

Noid, and the M&M's Red, Yellow, Blue, Green and Crispy (Orange) characters.[15][16]

The California Raisins' first big hit was the song "

The California Raisins Show. A couple of music albums of songs from the specials, produced by Nu Shooz
pop rock band leader John Smith were also released.

CBS also commissioned three more prime-time specials,

Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. Claymation Comedy of Horrors was nominated for this category, but lost to The Simpsons
. All were later released to video and DVD.

In the 1990s, a variety of Vinton's 400 + animators and technicians helped with new creations and films of their own using the Vinton facilities called the Walkabout Program. Craig Bartlett created his short film Arnold Escapes From Church (1988) and generated two more clay-animated short films, The Arnold Waltz (1990) and Arnold Rides a Chair (1991), each would later spawned Hey Arnold!, a cel-animated series for Nickelodeon in 1996.

Computer animation

The mid-1990s also saw Vinton adding computer animation to his output, used most visibly for his M&M's character commercials. A short CGI film, Fluffy, directed by Doug Aberle, was created during this time. Other CGI films—some combined with clay and stop-motion animation—soon followed. Vinton contributed to a consumer-grade computer animation application called Playmation, developed by Hash, Inc., a computer animation company in Vancouver, Washington. Vinton and associates also dabbled in animation for the internet with a series called Ozzie the Elf.

Switch from Claymation to Foamation

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Vinton Studios produced the animated series

Gary and Mike. Gary and Mike was shot using digital video capture system developed for the production by two Vinton engineers Miegel Ginsberg and Gary McRobert. Both series used a refinement in Vinton's style of dimensional animation. Most of the clay figures were replaced by models of moulded foam rubber, eliminating many of the limitations, and maintenance issues, that are inherent with clay, which had been developed by Vinton and his technical teams as far as it could go. Vinton soon coined a new term for this process, Foamation. The studio also produced an unaired pilot for Slacker Cats
in 2001.

Decline

By the end of the 1990s, the Vinton studio, seeking funds for more feature-length films, had become big enough to bring in outside investors, which included Nike, Inc., founder Phil Knight and his son, Travis, who had worked at the studio as an animator.

In spring of 2001, the studio's animated shows,

Gary and Mike
, were cancelled, with the latter only airing 13 episodes.

In 2002, Vinton lost control of the studio he founded after Knight became the majority shareholder and Vinton failed to garner funds for further feature production in Los Angeles, eventually being dismissed from the studio. Vinton later sought damages for this and sued for ownership of his name. In 2005, Will Vinton Studios was rebranded as Laika. Premiere stop-motion animator/director Henry Selick joined the studio as a supervising director. The studio currently produces theatrical films such as Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link.

Aftermath

Vinton later founded a new production facility, Will Vinton's Free Will Entertainment, also based in Portland. In 2005, Vinton produced The Morning After, the first short film under the new company. The film combines

Beverly Hills represented Vinton for production projects,[20] which included a graphic novel called Jack Hightower produced in tandem with Dark Horse Comics.[21]

Illness, retirement, and death

In 2006, Vinton was diagnosed with

Tribeca Film Festival.[24][25]

Archive

The moving image collection of Will Vinton is housed at the Academy Film Archive.[26] The Academy Film Archive has preserved several of Vinton's films, including Closed Mondays, The Creation, The Great Cognito, Dinosaur, Legacy, and A Christmas Gift.[27]

Work

Feature films

  • Gone for a Better Deal (1974) – director, producer (live-action documentary)
  • Return to Oz (1985) – claymation director, producer (Academy Award Nominated)
  • The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985) – director, producer (Comet Quest: UK: video title)
  • Shadow Play (1986) – producer (live-action thriller)
  • Festival of Claymation (1987) – director, producer (compilation of short films)
  • Moonwalker (1988) – segment director, producer: Speed Demon by Michael Jackson
  • Brain Donors (1992) – segment director (intro and outro)
  • The Wild (2006) – executive producer

TV series

  • The California Raisin Show, TV Series 23:00 × 13 (executive producer)
  • Klay's TV, TV Series Pilot (director, executive producer)
  • 5 Cecille shorts for Sesame Street, 1:30 min. (producer)
  • Adventures in Wonderland (Caterpillar's Stories), 4 min. × 30 (executive producer)
  • Hammer Time short for Sesame Street
  • Primetime Emmy Award
    Winner
  • Boyer Brother, TV Series Pilot (executive producer)
  • Primetime Emmy Award
    Nominee
  • Slacker Cats, TV Series Pilot (executive producer)

TV specials

Short films

  • Wobbly Wino, 2 min. (director, producer)
  • Culture Shock, 17 min. (co-director, producer)
  • Closed Mondays (1974), 9 min. (co-director) Academy Award Winner[28]
  • Mountain Music (1976), 9 min. (director, producer)[28]
  • Martin the Cobbler (1977), 26 min. (director, producer)
  • Claymation (1978), documentary, 18 min. (director, producer)[28][29][30]
  • Rip Van Winkle (1978), 26 min. (director, producer) Academy Award Nominee[28]
  • The Little Prince (1979), 25 min. (director, producer)
  • Legacy: A Very Short History of Natural Resources (1979), 7 min. (director, producer)
  • Dinosaur (1980), 17 min. (director, producer)[31]
  • A Christmas Gift (1980), 7 min. (director, producer)
  • Creation (1981), 7:36 (director, producer) Academy Award Nominee
  • The Great Cognito (1982), 5 min. (director, producer) Academy Award Nominee
  • The Diary of Adam and Eve, 24 min. (director, producer)
  • Vanz Kant Danz (John Fogerty music video) (1985), 6 min. (director, producer)
  • Mr. Resistor (1994), 8 min. (executive producer)
  • Zerox and Mylar (1995), 5 min. (executive producer)
  • Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension (1996), 13 min. (producer)
  • Bride of Resistor (1997), 6 min. (executive producer)
  • The Stars Came Dreaming (1998), 12 min. (executive producer)
  • Go Down Death, 10 min. (director, producer)
  • The Lost 'M' Adventure (3-D short film featuring the M&M's characters) (2000), 12 min. (executive producer)
  • Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) (2002), 8 min. (executive producer)[32]
  • The Morning After (2005), 7:30 (director, producer)
  • The Martial Artist (2007), 20 min. (director, producer, writer)

Musical theatre

  • The Kiss (2014), (director, producer)

References

  1. ^ Sandomir, Richard (October 9, 2018). "Will Vinton, Revolutionary Animator With Claymation, Dies at 70". The New York Times.
  2. ^ "The 47th Academy Awards (1975) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
  3. Mercury News. The Washington Post
    .
  4. ^ Slade, Eric (April 27, 2017). "The Portland DIY Clay Experiment That Changed Animation Forever". www.opb.org. Archived from the original on January 5, 2019. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
  5. ^ "Will Vinton's History (and the History of Claymation and Computer Animation)". WillVinton.net. 2005. Archived from the original on July 22, 2012. Retrieved June 20, 2012.
  6. New York Times. Archived from the original
    on February 28, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019. College of Environmental Design alumnus Will Vinton (B.A. Arch '70), who used his and a partner's revolutionary stop-motion animation process, Claymation, to win an Academy Award with an early cartoon and to create memorable commercial characters like the California Raisins, died last week in Portland, Oregon. He was 70.
  7. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Oscars. "Will Vinton's favorite Oscar® moment" – via YouTube.
  8. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Oscars. "An Oscar® opens doors" – via YouTube.
  9. ^ Picking Oscar Winners 1979 - Siskel and Ebert Movie Reviews
  10. ^ Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de; Billy Budd Films (December 30, 1979). "The Little Prince" – via Internet Archive.
  11. ^ Will Vinton Productions (December 30, 1976). "Martin the Cobbler" – via Internet Archive.
  12. ^ Will Vinton Productions (December 30, 1980). "Dinosaur" – via Internet Archive.
  13. ^ Johnson, James Weldon; Will Vinton Productions; Billy Budd Films (December 30, 1981). "Creation" – via Internet Archive.
  14. ^ "Animation Celebration Promotional Spots". February 5, 2016 – via Vimeo.
  15. ^ "Will Vinton: Animator / Filmmaker". The California Raisins. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
  16. ^ "Domino's Pizza (commercials) "The Noid" Puppet original movie prop". www.yourprops.com. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
  17. ^ "Will Vinton, animator behind the California Raisins, dies". San Francisco Chronicle. Associated Press. October 5, 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
  18. ^ Gallivan, Joseph (February 1, 2005). "As animated as it gets". Portland Tribune.
  19. ^ The Review, Tidings (March 20, 2014). "Will Vinton to premiere the Kiss at Lakewood". Pamplin Media Group. Retrieved July 13, 2022.
  20. ^ "Creative Artists Agency Signs Animation Innovator Will Vinton". WillVinton.net. June 4, 2003. Retrieved June 20, 2012.
  21. ^ "Jack Hightower TPB :: Profile :: Dark Horse Comics". www.darkhorse.com.
  22. ^ "William Gale "Will" Vinton (1947–2018)".
  23. KATU
    . October 4, 2018. Retrieved October 4, 2018.
  24. ^ ClayDream|2021 Tribeca Festival|Tribeca
  25. ^ 'Claydream', About Will Vinton-Phil Knight Fight, Gets US Deal - Deadline
  26. ^ "Will Vinton Collection". Academy Film Archive. August 20, 2015.
  27. ^ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
  28. ^ a b c d "Oddball Films: Will Vinton's Claymation Marvels - Thur. June 12 - 8PM".
  29. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: ClaymationKid. "Claymation Documentary Part 1" – via YouTube.
  30. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: ClaymationKid. "Claymation Documentary Part 2" – via YouTube.
  31. IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
  32. IMDb Edit this at Wikidata

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Will_Vinton&oldid=1220863500"