Will Vinton | |
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 Vinton in 2015 | |
| Born | William Gale Vinton (1947-11-17)November 17, 1947 McMinnville, Oregon, U.S. |
| Died | October 4, 2018(2018-10-04) (aged 70) Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1969–2014 |
| Children | 3 |
William Gale Vinton (November 17, 1947 – October 4, 2018)[1] was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for hisClaymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such asThe California Raisins. He was nominated for fiveAcademy Awards, winning once.[2] He also accepted severalEmmy andClio Awards for his studio's work.
Vinton was born on November 17, 1947, to a car dealer father and a bookkeeper mother in McMinnville, Oregon.[3] His paternal grandfather,William T. Vinton, was a well known state senator in Oregon, representing Portland.[citation needed]
During the 1960s, Vinton studied physics,architecture andfilmmaking at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he was influenced by the work ofAntoni Gaudí.[4] During this time, Vinton made afeature-lengthdocumentary film about theCalifornia counter-culture movement titledGone for a Better Deal, which toured college campuses in various film festivals of the time. Two more films about student protest followed,Berkeley Games andFirst Ten Days, as well a narrative shortReply, and his firstanimation,Culture Shock.[5]
Vinton received his bachelor's degree in architecture from UC Berkeley in 1970.[6]
Meeting clay animatorBob Gardiner in theBerkeley, California area in the early 1970s, Vinton brought him toPortland and they commandeered Vinton's home basement to make a quick 1½-minute test film ofclay animation (and the supporting armatures) calledWobbly Wino, completed in early 1973. Gardiner refined his sculpting and animation techniques while Vinton built a system for animating hisBolex Rex-5 16mm camera and they began work in mid-1973 on an 8-minute16mm short film about a drunk wino who stumbles into a closedart museum and interacts with thepaintings andsculptures. Completed in late 1974 after 14 months of production, the film combined Gardiner's sculpting skills and comedy writing talent with Vinton's camera skills.Closed Mondays won anAcademy Award for Best Animated Short Film in the spring of 1975, the first film produced in Portland to do so.[7][8]
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 the animation technology Gardiner had developed for their animated shortClosed Mondays. Quickly expanding his studio by hiring new animators, Vinton produced dozens of commercials for regional and then national companies.
| Company type | Animation Studio |
|---|---|
| Industry | Film,Entertainment,Advertising |
| Founded | 1975; 50 years ago (1975) |
| Founder | Will Vinton |
| Defunct | 2005 (2005) |
| Fate | BecameLaika |
| Successors | Free Will Entertainment Laika |
| Headquarters | Portland, Oregon |
Still with only a handful of animators, Vinton produced atrilogy of 27-minute films of ashort stories likefairy tales in the late 1970s and early 1980s, such asMartin the Cobbler (1977), the Oscar-nominatedRip Van Winkle (1978),[9] andThe Little Prince (1979). These films were later released theatrically under the umbrella titleTrilogy,[10] and later to video asThe Little Prince and Friends. In 1978, Vinton produced the documentaryClaymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation a 17-minute film featuring the behind-the-scenes technical processes used. The term "claymation" was later trademarked by Vinton,[11] and has become synonymous withclay animation in general.
Graduating to35mm film, Vinton produced other short films during this time:Legacy (1979),Dinosaur (1980),[12]The Creation (directed byJoan Gratz, 1981, Academy Award nominee),[13]The Great Cognito (directed by Barry Bruce, 1982, Academy Award nominee),A Christmas Gift, and the music videoVanz Kant Danz (1987) forCreedence Clearwater Revival'sJohn Fogerty.[14]VHS video compilations of these films were released in the 1980s asFestival of Claymation andSon of Combo II.
Vinton, no longer performing animation himself, later produced special effects scenes for TV shows and movies, including a sequence forBette Midler'sDivine Madness! movie (1980), an Emmy-winning sequence for theMoonlighting TV series (1987), and the opening and closing title sequences for the feature comedy filmBrain Donors (1992). His company's animation effects forDisney'sReturn to Oz (1985) were also nominated for the Academy Award for Special Effects. In May 1985, Will Vinton Productions released their first and only theatrical filmThe Adventures of Mark Twain.
Following his work onReturn to Oz, Vinton was hired by the Disney studio to produce animation effects for theirMichael JacksonDisneyland-EPCOT Center film,Captain EO in 1986 and theSpeed Demon music video for Michael Jackson's musical anthology feature-length film,Moonwalker (1988).
Prominent among his hundreds of now international commercial creations were theCalifornia Raisins, theDomino's PizzaNoid, and theM&M's Red, Yellow, Blue, Green and Crispy (Orange) characters.[15][16]
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 theCalifornia Raisin Advisory Board. They became such a media phenomenon that they went on to star in their own pair ofprimetime specials forCBS television,Meet the Raisins (1988),The Raisins Sold Out (1990), and acel-animated show,The California Raisins Show. A couple of music albums of songs from the specials, produced byNu Shooz pop rock band leader John Smith were also released.
CBS also commissioned three more prime-time specials,Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration (1987),Claymation Comedy of Horrors (1991), andClaymation Easter (1992).Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration andClaymation Easter won aPrimetime Emmy Award forOutstanding Animated Program. Claymation Comedy of Horrors was nominated for this category, but lost toThe Simpsons. All were later released to video and DVD.
In the 1990s, a variety of Vinton's 400+ animators and technicians helped with new creations and films of their own using the Vinton facilities called theWalkabout Program.Craig Bartlett created his short filmArnold Escapes From Church (1988) and generated two more clay-animated short films,The Arnold Waltz (1990) andArnold Rides a Chair (1991), each would later spawnedHey Arnold!, a cel-animated series forNickelodeon in 1996.
The mid-1990s also saw Vinton adding computer animation to his output, used most visibly for hisM&M's character commercials. A shortCGI 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 contributed to a consumer-grade computer animation application calledPlaymation, developed by Hash, Inc., a computer animation company in Vancouver, Washington.
In 1997,Brandon Tartikoff—in what would be his last substantial contribution to television before his death that year—commissioned Vinton to create a Christmas special,The Online Adventures of Ozzie the Elf. Ozzie the Elf was originally created as a mascot forAmerica Online's holiday portal, which Tartikoff (who was working for AOL at the time) saw as a potential crossover property. Vinton had high hopes that the special, which was animated in Claymation, would become a perennially rerun special.[17]
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Vinton Studios produced the animated seriesThe PJs for theFOX TV network. The series was conceived and executive-produced by actor and comedianEddie Murphy. Another animated series was produced for theUPN TV network by the Vinton studio,Gary and Mike.Gary and Mike was shot using digital video capture system developed for the production by two Vinton engineers Miegel Ginsberg and Gary McRobert. 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 inherent to polymer clay, the management techniques for which had been pushed to their limits by Vinton and his technical team. Vinton soon coined a new term for this process,Foamation. The studio also produced an unairedpilot forSlacker Cats in 2001.
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 Nike, Inc., founderPhil Knight and his son, Travis, who had worked at the studio as an animator.
In spring of 2001, the studio's animated shows,The PJs andGary and Mike, were cancelled, with the latter only airing 13 episodes.
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 rebranded asLaika. Premiere stop-motion animator/directorHenry Selick joined the studio as a supervising director. The rebranded studio went on to produce critically acclaimed traditional stop-motion features such asCoraline,ParaNorman,The Boxtrolls,Kubo and the Two Strings, andMissing Link.
Vinton later founded a new production facility, Will Vinton's Free Will Entertainment, also based in Portland. In 2005, Vinton producedThe Morning After, the first short film under the new company. The film combinesCGI andlive action. He also taught at the Portland branch ofThe Art Institutes[18] and maintained an office there as an artist in residence.[19] Vinton created amusical titledThe Kiss, an adaptation ofThe Frog Prince with music byDavid Pomeranz that premiered on March 24, 2014, inLake Oswego, Oregon.[20] TheCreative Artists Agency inBeverly Hills represented Vinton for production projects,[21] which included a graphic novel calledJack Hightower produced in tandem withDark Horse Comics.[22]
In 2006, Vinton was diagnosed withmultiple myeloma[23] and retired in 2008 from producing films. He died inPortland, Oregon, on October 4, 2018, after a 12-year battle with the disease at the age of 70.[24] He was the subject of the documentary filmClaydream, which was directed by Marq Evans and released at the 2021Tribeca Film Festival.[25][26] His family hosted a celebration of life for him atNo Vacancy Lounge in Portland on October 21, 2018.[27]
The moving image collection of Will Vinton is housed at theAcademy Film Archive.[28] The Academy Film Archive has preserved several of Vinton's films, includingClosed Mondays,The Creation,The Great Cognito,Dinosaur,Legacy, andA Christmas Gift.[29]
College of Environmental Design alumnus Will Vinton (B.A. Arch '70), who used his and a partner's revolutionary stop-motion animation process, Claymation, to win an Academy Award with an early cartoon and to create memorable commercial characters like the California Raisins, died last week in Portland, Oregon. He was 70.
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