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Photo Gallery Atari
Time-Warner wanted to experiment with a less complex
Digital Input Device that was pioneered by Tippett Stud
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 The animation
supervisor for The Lost World, Randal M. Dutra,
had at the ILM studios, the silicone molds of all the
dinosaur characters from the movie. The dinosaurs were
sculpted & molded by the well known Stan Winston
Studios in Southern California. These molds were
primarily used to cast the dinosaurs in a hard resin.
After the dinosaurs were cast, ILM then scanned these
models, to enter the contour data into their computer
database. Randy wanted poseable puppets, using
the silicone molds to cast the foam rubber dinosaurs. The
dinosaurs sculpted by Winston were larger than an average
stop motion animation puppet and so I had to use somewhat
large ball joints for these poseable puppets. When a ball
joint is too big, it is more difficult to control, but
fortunately, these poseable dinosaurs were not going to
be animated....again, only for posing demonstration
purposes. |
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MISCELLANEOUS
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As I stated a few times
elsewhere on this site, I usually did not have time to
photograph armatures, puppets, sets, etc.. This was also
the case on The PJ's series. I worked on the first season
of The PJ's and other crew people continued to work on
the subsequent seasons in the Armature
shop (which I helped set-up) and Puppet Fabrication
departments. Someone who worked on the last season of The
PJ's was generous to email me some photos he took of the
Thurgood armature. This was my design and all the other
characters where similar. All using basic ball and socket
armatures. The long square tube at armature neck is where
the hollow resin head slips onto, then behind head
there's built-in set screw to tighten against the neck
tube. Anyway this could be a unique photo of one of the
PJ's armatures. I do not remember seeing online pics
anywhere. As you can see in one of the photos, many
armature duplicates of the Thurgood armatures/puppets
were constructed and also duplicates were made of the
other main puppet characters.
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As usual, I again did not
have time to take photos and I missed the opportunity to
shoot the completed Davey Armatures, however, I did  manage to capture
the Goliath Armatures. My hand is in one of the shots so
you can see the scale size. Basic ball and sockets .....
very clean and efficient design. Stop Motion Animators
Anthony Scott and veteran Peter Kleinow did the
animation. You will note wire attachments for upper &
lower lips, the ears, and for the tail. The wire ends are
screwed into threaded holes on various parts of the
armature. A better system, might have been a plug-in wire
for faster turnaround repairs, but with finesse &
delicate animation you would be surprised how long wires
last. The early and old Goliath armatures had wires
soldered onto armature and you can imagine the difficulty
in replacing wires. The puppet skin was cast in foam
rubber latex and then flocked for the fuzzy look.
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ios. They asked me to fabricate a
human armature & requested that the entire armature
be of a black color. I had the steel armature parts black
matte plated & the aluminum parts black-anodized.
Atari was going to place reflective markers at all the
major joint points, then shoot the test animation
sequences in a darkened room; the idea being, of
"capturing" the moving markers (with video
cameras) & inputting the data into the computer.
After I finished that job, the character fabrication
department of Danger Productions (doing Bump in
theNight) took on a job from Atari Time-Warner to
make some complex armatures & finished puppets for
the interactive video game Primal Rage 2. Danger
then gave me some work to fabricate all the hands for the
these puppets. The hands were fully jointed. After the
production of Bump in the Night ended, the
studio closed, but Atari needed some more puppets and
asked Tony McVey (Menagerie Productions) to complete the
armature & puppet fabrication for the additional
characters. Tony then gave me the task to make these
intricate armatures.
