As an europeean examples I can mention "Pingu", a swiss clay mation series, which came out the same year as "The California Raisins".

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Norman Beasley
7 years ago
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1 Claymation I m going to tell you a little bit about clay animation or claymation. The reason why I want to talk about clay animation is because it is this genre that first made me interested in animation. When I was a child I remember that they showed these short clay animations in between programs on T.V. The animation was just about two little balls of clay that would undergoe a variety of changes of moods and changes of form during the two minutes the animation lasted. The characters in the animations did not try to pretend they where anything but clay characters. They did not try to look like reality. The where just clay balls on an empty stage. I was really happy about that. I still really like this type of clay animation. The style is still being used, but mostly with the retro aspect in mind, in projects like Nickelodeon s "Purple and Brown". Clay animation has gone a long way since I as a child and I would like to give you a brief history of the genre. I will start out by taking a quick look into the technique of claymation: Claymation is a form of stop animation where each animated piece is deformable. This applies to both background and characters. Each piece is usually made out of plasticine clay which is a sort of modeling clay made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. For feature-length productions, the use of clay has generally been supplanted by rubber silicone. As in all kinds of animation the clay-mations greatest goal is to create the illusion of movement. A variety of claymation is called clay melting. It was used by Will Vinton, who is credited for coining the term claymation in 1971, and it was used in the adventure movie Raiders of the Lost Ark from Clay animated films were produced in the United States as early as 1908 when Edison Manufacturing released a trick film entitled The Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream. The next 12 years, claymation was a popular way of animating, but in the 1920s this method was completely run over by cell animation because this method was the preferred of the animation studios. As a result of that there is only few known examples from the entire 1920s. One of those is the film called "Modeling" from 1921 by the Fleisher Brothers studio. I have not been able to find this short film and it seemed like they quickly dropped 3D animation in favor of 2D animation. In their hey day the where one of the biggest competitors to the Walt Disney Studios and they where responsible for getting Popey the Sailor Man, Superman and Betty Boop to the screen.

All in all there is very little examples of big clay animation production between the 1920s and the 1970s. Which makes me return to the before mention Mr. Vinton and his Will Vinton Studios.

2 All in all there is very little examples of big clay animation production between the 1920s and the 1970s. Which makes me return to the before mention Mr. Vinton and his Will Vinton Studios. I first became aware of the studios a little while ago. (growing up in Europe I mostly saw italien, polish and british animation). I was having a conversation with my boyfriend and I told him about a toy I used to have as a kid. I had found it in a supermarket in the 1990s and it was in a pile of plastic junk, labelled 10 kroner (1 $). "It was the silliest thing" I told him "It was a raisin on a skateboard, with sunglasses!" He was however not impressed by my toy and simply said "Oh, that s a California Raisin". He also told me that my toy had been part of one of the most successful animated commercials ever. It turned out that a commercial with the California Raisins had been so big in the States that a merchandise from the commercial had landed in a danish supermarkets in the 1990s. The california Raisins where, as far as I now, not marketed in Denmark since the first danish T.V station with commercial breaks didn t start airing until However when I saw the commercial on youtube I felt somehow that I had seen it: The California Raisins first appeared in on T.V in It was will Vinton studios that landed the job. The commercial became so popular that more commercial with The California Raisins followed along with two T.V specials "Meet the Raisins" 1988 and "Raisins: Sold Out!" in Four albums was released sung by musician Buddy Miles and the raisins got their own saturday morning cartoon series called "The California Raisins Show". There are several reasons why the raisin commercial was so successful: One of the reasons where that the commercial was so entertaining that the viewer barely noticed they where being sold something, which actually enabled the California Raisins company to sell even more, because now they could also sell all sorts of plastic merchandise from the commercial. An other reason why the commercial became so big was due to the fact that 2D animation had been dominating the commercial animation world up until that point. Clay animation had been mostly used in very arty projects such as Will Vintons own "Closed Mondays" which was made in co-operation with bob Gardiner in As an europeean examples I can mention "Pingu", a swiss clay mation series, which came out the same year as "The California Raisins".

The thing that is quite great about the Will Vinton studios is that they earned a lot of their money on doing commercial jobs (the studio is also very know for their Dominos Pizza commercial from

3 The thing that is quite great about the Will Vinton studios is that they earned a lot of their money on doing commercial jobs (the studio is also very know for their Dominos Pizza commercial from 1987) but they also made a great variety of really interesting projects like a "The Adventures of Mark Twain" from The movie was banned from some television stations. maybe because it is actually a bit scary. I was watching the a clip from it the other day and I actually finds it bone chilling even as an adult. But when mentioning Will Vinton Studios i think it is relevant to also talk about Nick Park of the Aardman studios. He is a clay animator working in Brittain and his work is widely know. Personally I really like Parks work because he masters the skill of making a something that is very funny and entertaining at the same time as it tells you something about people and the society we live in. He also manages to make a work that can be understood on many levels and it works perfectly for both children and adult. The most famous animation he did was the "Wallace and Gromit" animations. The first "Wallace and Gromit" animation was "A Grand Day out" from 1989 and the animation series are still being made. The latest title is "A Matter of Loaf and death" and it is still in the making.

However my own personal favorite is the project he did with Richard Goleszowski called "Creature Comfort". The first creature comfort was aired in 1989.

4 However my own personal favorite is the project he did with Richard Goleszowski called "Creature Comfort". The first creature comfort was aired in It was a show about animals in a zoo talking about their problems. In the first "Creature Comforts" short they used recordings of Brittish people talking about their homes and then they animated the animals as though they where the ones talking. I like they series alot in terms of character animations. Park and Goleszowski are really good at portraying a typical Brittish person through birds, cats, dogs and lions in clay. It is an animation series that is very political in a very subtle way. In 2008 they made a "Creature Comfort" in which a journalist interviews animals about the American election and one in which a dog get s asked about his opinion on the war in Iraq. Park and Goleszowsky won an Oscar for the first "Creature Comfort". The reason I like the "Creature Comforts" so much is because the creators has managed to do exactly what I find the appealing about animation; they manage to create a world of their own. What is so nice about the world they create is that their world expresses something about the world we live in. They somehow manage to lift everyday problems to a place where you see them from a different angel, which makes you both a bit concerned but mostly a bit more happy. Lina Larsen Videos related to the subject: California Raisin commercial: Will Vinton, The adventures of Mark Twain: Nick Park and Richard Goleszowski, Creature Comforts :

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