 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; instead, Phil used my armature 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.
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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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