威尔·文顿，1948 年出生在俄勒冈州，70 年代早期进入加州大学柏克莱分校学习物理、建筑与电影制作。大学期间拍摄了一部反文化纪录片《黄粱美梦》（Gone for a Better Deal），该片在影展和校园引起极大反响。威尔·文顿对西班牙建筑大师安东尼奥·高蒂十分迷恋，欣赏其艺术作品呈现的流动设计感，受此影响开始黏土动画实验创作。毕业后，威尔·文顿正式进入电影制作行业，除了担任导演工作，也从事编剧、摄影与剪接。在此时期，威尔·文顿个人纯艺术创作之余也兼顾商业动画创作。威尔·文顿执导创作的最知名的商业动画是加州葡萄干与M&M 巧克力广告片，特别是前一商业动画广告产生了极具影响的媒体效应，并衍生出一系列广告、娱乐商品与电视节目《加州葡萄干电视秀》。
1974 年，威尔·文顿完成九分钟动画短片《周一公休》(Closed Mondays) ，该片在1975 年获得奥斯卡最佳动画短片奖。此后，他创造了“黏土动画”（Claymation）一词来描述且进一步定义自己的作品，并将它正式注册成为一个商标，变成他的专利。1976 年，他创立了威尔·文顿制作公司，开始探索黏土动画与立体动画创作的可能性。1977 至1979 年间，威尔·文顿根据俄罗斯文学巨匠托尔斯泰的文学作品改编创作了《补鞋匠马丁》（Martin the Cobbler），根据美国文学家华盛顿·欧文的作品改编创作了《李伯大梦》（Rip Van Winkle），根据法国文学家安东尼奥·戴·圣修伯里的名著改编创作《小王子》（The Little Prince），这三部动画短片后来集结成三部曲。
1985年，威尔·文顿完成了世界动画史上第一部全黏土动画长片《马克·吐温历险记》（The Adventures of Mark Twain）。2002 年，耐克注资威尔·文顿制作公司，威尔·文顿退出公司经营管理，另成立“自由意志娱乐公司”，在专注于原有黏土动画制作导演之外，开始计算机动画与Flash 动画的创作。
威尔·文顿的黏土动画使用了专业的彩色橡胶黏土或称塑型土（plasticine clay）技术，他为世界动画发展做出了杰出贡献，是黏土动画与停格动画（stop-motion animation）领域的奇才，同时也是3D动画的开路先锋。
现在全球最知名的黏土动画创作者是英国的阿曼动画公司，但是更早将黏土动画发挥到极致的该是让「Claymation」闻名於世的Will Vinton。这位柏克莱建筑系的毕业生，自小就对拍片有极浓厚的兴趣，大学毕业后没多久，和令一位建筑师所合拍的黏土动画短片「Closed Mondays」一举夺得奥斯卡最佳动画短片奖，自此声名大噪。他在1970和80年代拍了许多精彩的黏土动画短片和广告，其中以「加州葡萄乾」（California Raisins）的系列广告最为人所熟知。而1985年的长片《马克吐温历险记》（The Adventures of Mark Twain），巧妙地结合了马克吐温和他笔下膾炙人口的角色汤母莎耶和哈克，利用可塑性高的黏土素材，创造了一趟变化多端、趣味横生的旅程。威尔.文顿的作品充满美国式的热闹趣味，也令人惊异於黏土素材可随意拉长压扁穿洞重生的惊人可塑性。直到今日文顿仍持续创作新的作品，他的影响力也可从新一代美国黏土动画作品（如MTV台的《名人殊死战》（The Celebrity Death Match））中清楚看出。（Mao）
◎参考书目
《Clay Animation》Michael FriersonTwayne
《Secrets of Clay Animation Revealed!》
Marc Spess，Lynda Lotman编Animate Clay
Will Vinton (born 1947) is an American director and producer of animated films. He was born in McMinnville , Oregon , near Portland . He has won an Oscar for his work, and several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for the work of his studio
Education
During the 1960s, Vinton studied physics, architecture and filmmaking at the University of California, Berkeley , where he was influenced by the work of Antoni Gaudi . [ citation needed ] During this time, Vinton made a black-and-white feature-length documentary film about the California counter-culture movement titled, Gone For a Better Deal which toured college campuses in various film festivals of the time. Two more films about student protest followed, Berkeley Games and First Ten Days , as well a narrative short Reply , and his first animation , Culture Shock . [ [1] ]
Collaboration with Bob Gardiner
Meeting clay animator Bob Gardiner in the Berkeley, California area in the early 1970s, Vinton brought him to Portland and the two commandeered Vinton's home basement to make a quick 1 1/2-minute test film of clay animation (and the supporting armatures) called Wobbly Wino , completed in early 1973. Gardiner refined his sculpting and animation skills while Vinton built a system for animating his Bolex Rex-5 16mm camera and the two began work in mid-1973 on an 8-minute 16mm short film about a drunk wino who stumbles into a closed art museum and interacts with the paintings and sculptures . Completed in late 1974 after 14 months of production, the innovative film combined Gardiner's amazing sculpting skills with Vinton's considerable camera skills and Closed Mondays stunned film festival judges around the world. Closed Mondays then won an Oscar for best animated short film in the spring of 1975, the first film produced in Portland to do so.
Vinton and Gardiner parted ways during the production of their second short film, Mountain Music completed by Vinton in 1976. Gardiner focused on producing PSA spots for local political issues (eventually evolving into other artistic media such as music and holograms) while Vinton established Will Vinton Productions (later Will Vinton Studios) in Portland to capitalize on his constantly-improving animation technology. Quickly expanding his studio by hiring new animators, Vinton produced dozens of commercials for regional and then national companies.
Going solo
Still with only a handful of animators, he produced a highly-polished trilogy of acclaimed 27-minute fairy tales in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Martin the Cobbler (1977), Rip Van Winkle (1978, nominated for an Academy Award), and The Little Prince (1979). The trio of films later were collectively theatrically released under the title Trilogy , then to video as The Little Prince and Friends. 1978 also saw the production of a 17-minute documentary featuring the behind-the-scenes technical processes used by Vinton and his animators. Titled Claymation , the term caught on with viewers, and was soon trademarked by Vinton, later to become synonymous with clay animation in general.
The 35mm years
Graduating to 35mm film, other short films were produced during this time: Legacy (1979), Dinosaur (1980), The Creation (directed by Joan Gratz , 1981, Oscar nominated), The Great Cognito (directed by Barry Bruce , 1982, Oscar nominated), and early music videos: a longform "video" called A Christmas Gift for Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary , and Vanz Kant Danz (1987) for Creedence Clearwater Revival 's John Fogerty . VHS Video compilations of these films were released in the 1980s as Festival of Claymation and Son of Combo II .
Vinton, himself no longer actively animating by now, also produced special effects scenes for TV shows and movies, including a sequence for Bette Midler's Divine Madness! movie (1980), an Emmy-winning sequence for the Moonlighting TV series (1987), the opening and closing title sequences for the feature comedy film Brain Donors (1992), and his own feature-length movie, The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985). His studio's animation effects for Disney 's Return to Oz (1985) were also nominated for a special effects Oscar.
Springing from his work on Return to Oz , Vinton was hired by the Disney studio to produce animation effects for their Michael Jackson multi-media Disneyland-Disney World extravaganza, Captain EO in 1986 ( September 12 , 1986 ) and the Speed Demon sequence for Michael Jackson musical anthology feature-length film, Moonwalker (1987).
Prominent among his hundreds of now international commercial creations were the California Raisins , the Domino's Pizza Noid , and the M&M's Red, Yellow, and Green characters. [ citation needed ]
The California Raisins' first big hit was the song I Heard It Through the Grapevine in the first of their series of TV spots for the California Raisin Advisory Board . They became such a media phenomenon that they went on to star in their own pair of primetime specials for CBS television, Meet the Raisins (1988) and The Raisins Sold Out (1990). A couple music albums of songs from the specials, produced by Nu Shooz pop-rock band leader John Smith were released also.
CBS also commissioned three more prime-time specials, A Claymation Christmas Celebration (1988, an Emmy winner), The Claymation Comedy of Horrors a 1991 Halloween special, and A Claymation Easter (1992) All were later released to video and DVD.
During the 1990s, the Vinton Studios produced the animated series The PJs for the FOX TV network. The series was conceived and executive-produced by Eddie Murphy . Another animated series was produced for the UPN TV network by the Vinton studio, Gary and Mike , now a cult favorite. Both series used a refinement in Vinton's style of dimensional animation. Most of the clay figures were replaced by models of moulded foam rubber, eliminating many of the limitations, and maintenance issues, that are inherent with clay, which had been developed by Vinton and his technical teams as far as it could go. Vinton soon coined a new term for this process, Foamation .
The 1990s also flourished as a variety of Vinton's 400 + animators and technicians flowered with new creations and films of their own using the Vinton facilities called the Walkabout Program . Craig Bartlett created his Arnold Escapes From Church short film (1986, winner of an Oscar in 1987) which later spawned Hey Arnold! , a cel-animated series for Nickelodeon and generated two more clay-animated short films, The Arnold Waltz (1990) and Arnold Rides a Chair (1991).
Computer animation
The late 1990s also saw Vinton adding computer animation to his output, used most visibly for his many M&M's character commercials. A short CGI film, Fluffy , directed by Doug Aberle , was created during this time. Other CGI films — some combined with clay and stop-motion animation — soon followed. Vinton also briefly dabbled in a consumer user form of computer animation software called Playmation , co-developed by animation software writers based at a computer animation company, Hash, Inc. , located across the Columbia River in Portland's sister city, Vancouver, Washington . Vinton and associates also dabbled in animation for the internet with a series called Ozzie the Elf .
Vinton Studio
By the end of the 1990s, the Vinton studio, seeking funds for more feature length films, had become big enough to bring in outside investors, which included shoe company Nike, Inc. owner Phil Knight and his son, who had worked at the studio as an animator.
In 2002, Vinton lost control of the studio he founded after Knight became the majority shareholder and Vinton failed to garner funds for further feature production in Los Angeles , eventually being dismissed from the studio. Vinton later sought damages for this and sued for ownership of his name. In 2005 Will Vinton Studios was renamed LAIKA and LAIKA/House . Premier animator-director Henry Selick joined the LAIKA studio in 2005.
Vinton has since founded a new production facility (with a web site), Will Vinton's Freewill Entertainment , also based in Portland. Vinton is also associated with the Portland branch of The Art Institute in Northwest Portland and maintains an office there as an artist in residence. The Creative Artist Agency in Beverly Hills, California represents Vinton for production projects (CAA). Projects include a graphic novel called Jack Hightower produced in tandem with Dark Horse comics located in Milwaukie, Oregon a suburb of Portland. Plans exist for a variety of film, TV, and multi-media projects and one short film, The Morning After , the first produced under Vinton's new banner, which combines CGI and live action , was completed in 2005.
Body of work
作品目录
Feature films
The Wild , 89 min. (executive producer)
Festival of Claymation , 80 min. (director, producer) compilation of short films
The Adventures of Mark Twain , 86 min. (director, producer), aka Comet Quest (UK: video title)
Shadow Play , 95 min. (producer) live action thriller
Return to Oz , (claymation director, producer) Academy Award Nominee
Gone for a Better Deal , 86 min. (director, producer) live action documentary
TV series
Gary and Mike , TV Series 23:00 x 13 (executive producer) Prime-time Emmy Award Nominee
The PJs , TV Series 23:00 x 52 (executive producer) Prime-time Emmy Award Winner
The California Raisin Show , TV Series 23:00 x 13 (creative director, executive producer)
Klay's TV , TV Series Pilot (director, executive producer)
Slacker Cats , TV Series Pilot (executive producer)
Boyer Brother , TV Series Pilot (executive producer)
Cecille segment for Sesame Street , 4 min. x 8 (producer)
Adventures in Wonderland , (animated segments), 4 min. x 30 (executive producer)
TV specials
Will Vinton's A Claymation Christmas Celebration , 24 min. (director, producer) Prime-time Emmy Winner
Claymation Easter Special , 24:00 (director) (executive producer, producer) Prime-time Emmy Winner
Claymation Comedy of Horrors , 24:00 (executive producer, producer) Prime-time Emmy Winner
Raisins Sold Out: California Raisins II , 24:00 (director, producer) Prime-time Emmy Nominee
Meet the Raisins! , 24:00 (director, producer, executive producer) Prime-time Emmy Winner
Short films
The Little Prince , 25 min. (director, producer)
Martin the Cobbler , 26 min. (director, producer)
Rip Van Winkle , 26 min. (director, producer) Academy Award Nominee
The Diary of Adam and Eve , 24 min. (director, producer)
Closed Mondays , 9 min. (co-creator) Academy Award Winner
Mr. Resistor , 8 min. (executive producer)
Bride of Resistor , 6 min. (executive producer)
Dinosaurs! - A Fun-Filled Trip Back in Time! , 17 min. (director, producer)
Legacy , 7 min. (director, producer)
A Christmas Gift , 7 min. (director, producer)
The Great Cognito , 5 min. (director, producer) Academy Award Nominee
The Creation , 9 min. (director, producer)
Michael Jackson Speed Demon music video, 12 min. (director, producer)
The Morning After , 7:30 (director, producer)
Mountain Music , 9 min. (director, producer)
Wobbly Wino , 2 min. (director, producer)
Culture Shock , 17 min. (director, producer)
Go Down Death , 10 min. (director, producer)
Claymation , documentary, 18 min. (director, producer)
Vanz Kant Danz (John Fogerty music video), 6 min. (director, producer)
The Lost 'M' Adventure (CGI featuring the M&M's characters), 12 min. (executive producer)
Xerox and Mylar , 5 min. (executive producer)
The Stars Came Dreaming , 12 min. (executive producer)
Day of the Dead , 8 min. (executive producer)
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