Qualityville stop motion

In keeping with the last posting, this is also from a stop motion commercial. It was for a Qualityville Products TV spot created at Cascade Pictures in about 1970.

Cascade Pictures was a major provider of visual effects, stop motion and cartoon animation for commercials for (I believe) the late 1950s through the mid 1970s. 

I was fortunate enough to work there and get a terrific real world visual effects education.

Ogg and the Pink Baby Dinosaur

Hello all. I apologize for the slow turn around on this blog. I have been prepping for a new quarter at school. I’m going way back in time for this post.

This is a frame from the first commercial I was paid to work on; my first professional job in 1969 at Cascade Pictures. This is from a Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies cereal commercial featuring a caveman named Ogg. (His wife was “Kell” … for Kell-Oggs.)  These characters were used until about 1975.  (see link below)

Read the rest of this entry »

“The Magic Treasure”

“The Magic Treasure” is one of those obscure little films that few have heard about and even less has seen. It was conceived in about 1969-70 by David Allen as a stop motion production of “The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde. Through 1970 and 1971 dialog was recorded, sets and puppets were constructed and production began shooting in October, 1971. Part way through production a cartoon version of “the Selfish Giant” was released.

David Allen with puppets of the Giant and the villagers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Conspiracy bugs

Animating the “bugs” for the episode, “Conspiracy” was my first work on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Visual Effects Supervisor, Dan Curry, brought the job to David Stipes Productions, Inc. in April of 1988. The property master, Alan Sims, had commissioned another company to create the bug.  They had done a fine sculpting job but I realized we would have to re-build it for the stop motion animation.

The creature was cast in a dense silicone material and was very stiff. The legs were small nubs that were not long enough to reach the floor to propel the creature along.  We set about re-sculpting the creature and giving it longer legs and defining the body segments a bit more.  A plaster mold was made and fitted with a simple wire armature and the creature was cast in rubber.

Read the rest of this entry »

It began with Kong

King Kong and Son of Kong were the first stop motion visual effects films I was aware of. I was about 8 or 9 yrs old at the time. I have a strong recollection of watching them on our treasured black and white television.

With Son of Kong, I was especially captivated by the images of Skull Island sinking and Carl Denham and others scrambling to the top of the rocks with “Kiko”, the young albino son of Kong.  I was moved as Kiko saved the life of Carl Denham at the end. (Yep, Kiko was actually his name per RKO documents of the time.)  

Fascinated, I knew something special had unreeled before my eyes but I did not know how it was accomplished.  I went and asked my mother how King Kong and Son of Kong were done. She told me they were trained monkeys. Even at my young age, I had seen a number of trained monkeys at zoos and on TV and none of them looked or moved like Kong.  I did not know what Kong was but I knew my mother was wrong; Kong was not a trained monkey!

Read the rest of this entry »