 After that and some other small jobs, I did work
for Danger  Production's & ABC
television's Bump in the Night Saturday morning
weekly show created by Danger's two principal's, David Bleiman
& Ken Pontac. Although Bump was
categorized by the "powers that be" as a "childrens show", I always
thought it was for an older or adult audience. It kind of had that Rocky
& Bullwinkle humor. I assisted Danger's main
armature shop with additional animation armatures, spare armature parts
& components. The show was a successful hit on American TV;
however, this was when the Disney Corporation bought ABC television,
and then abruptly cancelled Bump in spite of the
good ratings.
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 Some more miscellaneous jobs and then, a
direct-to-video  B-movie, called Galaxis,
starring that statuesque blonde, Brigitte Nielson! I designed &
fabricated a Cyborg robot armature-finished Stop Motion puppet. They
had a full size cable operated cyborg for the close-up shots but it did
not have any legs (only to the hips), and they needed wide scenes
showing the full body cyborg walking, and so Stop Motion was used;
everything was extremely rushed. The producers gave me photos of the
cyborg (leg-less) and I made a miniature Stop Mo version of it, using
my own leg design. It took a very short 2 weeks
of intense work to construct this somewhat, extensively machined
armature / puppet. Unfortunately, I did not have time to photograph it
but you can somewhat see what the cyborg looked like; it is standing
behind Brigitte Nielson! The veteran & master stop motion
animator, Pete Kleinow, animated the quick scenes of the Cyborg puppet.
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 Tippett Studios was preparing to go into full
production on Starship Troopers; they contacted me and wanted me to
convert these resin model maquette bugs by adding ball &
sockets at every articulation point, so that Phil could do test poses
for storyboarding & visualiza tion purposes. Again, these poseable bug maquettes
were not used for animation. Phil gave me the coolest assignment; to
make a fully animateable, complex armature, of the giant battle insect
named Warrior.
The armature was not covered with any rubber skin; it looked like
a robotic
silver colored version of the "Warrior" bug and it also,was not used in
the finished movie. It was used for test animation and tactile hands-on
visualization posing of the Warrior
bugs. In addition,
this armature used as a tool to audition & test potential stop
motion animators who would later be using his studio's innovative
D.I.D's (Digital Input Device), which inputs the animation via stop
motion. You can see images of the robotic looking Warrior fully
jointed armature for posing & animatics testing, in
the Gallery link above. Also here
and here.
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 Well after that, it was kind of
slow....wandering around.... some occasional small jobs. I then got
some work doing some complicated human armatures for super hero-like
puppet characters. The master sculptor & character designer,
Tony McVey & his company Menagerie Productions, was assigned
the project for Atari-Time Warner's Interactive video game called Primal
Rage 2. These were highly engineered & machined
human armatures, jointed right down to the fingers . In hindsight, perhaps this
was a bit much for a video game. I think simpler armatures under the
foam rubber would possibly have worked just as good. Other than the
popular, The Neverhood, I do not know if Stop
Motion is used much for interactive games anymore. Stop motion
animators, Pete Kleinow & Jon Berg did the animation. By the
way, do not forget to go to the Link page
& "click" on Menagerie Productions web site; you will see
Tony's amazing display of his artistry & incredible looking
model figure kits & busts.
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 Thinking that the work I was
doing, was starting to die, I suddenly got a call from Randal M. Dutra
at Industrial Light & Magic. They were working on The
Lost World ! Randy w as Phil Tippett's right hand
man for many years. Phil was not involved with the Jurassic sequel,
however Randy, (who worked on Jurassic)
remembered me & also decided to go with "poseable puppets" of
the main dinosaur characters in Lost World, to be
used as a visual aid when Randy communicated with the ILM animators.
Randy was the animation supervisor on Lost World.
In addition to his great talent as a realist-type stop motion animator
(in the Harryhausen tradition!), he is a very accomplished wildlife
nature artist and sculptor.
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There
was a a re-birth of Davey & Goliath for new audiences in 2002 that
included some spots for the Lutheran Church and a
special, Davey & Goliath's Snowboard Christmas.
Read this article. I did some work on that
creating armatures for some of characters including a some for a bear
character. It was all done with good ol' Classic Stop
Motion done in a very finessed and clean animation
style. Stop Motion Animator Anthony Scott and veteran Peter Kleinow did
the animation. Joe Clokey is now the
head chief at Premavision Studio while his Dad, Art
Clokey is kind of relaxing and enjoying a bit of
retirement.<< Back -----Next >>
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