Stop-Motion

From 1985 to 1992 I worked for Doug Beswick and Dave Allen where I had the opportunity to learn the craft of stop-motion armature making and to try my hand at stop-motion animation. I also did a good deal of machining for animatronic and/or cable puppetry, with a dose of sculpting and mold-making thrown in. The films that I either animated or built armatures for in this period are:

THE MOUSE ON THE MOTORCYCLE
    Beswick Productions. We were contracted to build three mouse armatures, duplicating the designs of the prolific Peter Marinello, for animation director John Matthews. RUN AWAY RALPH,(the sequel) required a 'cat' armature, again from Peter's design. And I built a pocket Ralph cable puppet for that film as well. Our last job for John was building two armatures for his MORRIS THE MOOSE film.


EVIL DEAD 2
    Beswick Productions. Doug landed a sizable portion of that film. He not only had the 'Dancing Headless Corpse' stop-motion sequence, but his shop was also awarded production of a full size mechanical tree limb and, what was known as the 'Rotten Apple Head'. I built the Dancing Corpse armature under Doug's supervision. Doug machined the feet and collet joints. I was Doug's animation assistant. That meant sitting under a table for a couple of shots turning a crank to raise puppet arms through the set or the cross dropping just before the girl rises up. All of the animation was Doug's.




THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3
    There were two versions of Freddy Kruger that were done with stop-motion for this film. The first was a clay Freddy puppet that was supposed to be hanging on a wall.The head transforms from a lump of clay head into a likeness of Freddy. He cuts himself down, and proceeds to kill a teenager. We assembled the armature for this puppet from Bill Hedge's Jointworks parts. The puppet body was fabricated by Mark Wilson.The transformation animation was done with a head replacement series.It required sculpting a likeness of Freddy, making a silicon mold, and casting 30 or so versions, and sculpting it back down to a formless lump. The heads were registered at the neck and would be replaced during animation from last to first to 'reveal' the transformed Freddy. I did similar set of replacement hands for the shot of his hand transforming from a lump. Doug did the process shot of Freddy turning his head to look at the sleeping victim. I did the shot of Freddy cutting his strings and dropping out of the shot. Doug did the shot of Freddy landing on the floor and walking away.






    The second part of that job was Freddy as a Skeleton in a junkyard. I built most of the armature out of brass with aluminum joints. The feet and hip joints were stainless steel parts made by Doug. I built up the skeleton directly on the armature with Flexi-sculpt which was baked and sealed before painting. The skull was a modified from a styrene model kit.I added tissue and latex to create a rotted skin texture. Doug did all of the animation. This puppet was re-dressed later and used for a film called AFTER MIDNIGHT.







BEETLEJUICE
    Beswick Productions.There were three stop-motion sequences we did for this film. The first was a transforming fireplace. That was a replacement series handled by Joerg Fiederer.The second was the Sand-worm. I worked with Doug on the armature and built the skull and jaw for the inner head. Doug animated all of the shots seen in the film. I did a Sand-worm shot that was cut. Then we had the 'Statue Garden' sequence. Doug and I worked on the armatures together. I sculpted the statues to match the full sized live action props. They were painted by Margaret Prentice. I animated the shots of them coming to life and walking out of the 'garden'. Both Doug and I animated the shot of them grabbing the live action characters.







THE ABYSS
    Dreamquest/Beswick Productions. Doug was contacted and asked to provide some animation for The Abyss. Dreamquest was using stop-motion to animate a robot arm on a mini-sub. Doug didn't have time to do it but he had an idea about what technique might give them the results they wanted. They gave us a back-up arm to test in his shop. Doug suggested attaching incremented gauges to each axis of rotation on the arm. Timing and spacing could be tested,adjusted, and repeated. I did the test shot and we showed it to Cameron.They decided to go ahead with that plan and I spent several days at Dreamquest animating the arm on a blue screen/smoke stage.

GREMLINS 2
    Beswick Productions was awarded two sequences for this film. One involved several shots of a 'Bat' Gremlin. There where two bat Gremlin armatures made. I built one that was used for ordinary wire rig flight. Another machinist built one with a 'blur' mechanism that was used for a motion control blue screen shot that Doug animated. He also animated shots of the bat Gremlin taking flight in the lab and flying around in the street.I animated a shot of the bat Gremlin covered in 'quick dry' cement, landing on a church steeple and freezing into a gargoyle pose as the cement drys. In order to match the pose of the static gremlin exactly I had to animate the shot in reverse, starting with the matched pose. For the shot of the bat Gremlin sprouting wings I animated a miniature set of wings unfolding on a blue screen stage, with a motion control camera pushing in to create the illusion of growth. There was also a stop-motion spider Gremlin sequence planned. I built the armature for that. Both Gremlin puppets were sculpted by Jim Kagle.I animated another shot that involved a dozen or so 3" tall Gremlins with wire armatures that were supposed to be fighting each other while riding on top of a descending elevator.Those puppets were provided by Rick Baker's shop.





BLIND FURY
    Beswick Productions.In the film 'Tex' Cobb is cut in half with a sword just as he falls out of a window. A wire puppet, in two parts, was constructed and I animated both parts tumbling in front of a blue screen while a motion control camera pulled away to simulate the fall. It was composited against a matte painting that appears to look down a high mountain cliff.

TEENY WEENIES
    Beswick Productions. This was the working title of "Honey I Shrunk the Kids". At this early stage the film was being directed by Stuart Gordon and some of the effects were to be done at Illusion Arts. We were hired to build a stop-motion ant for Pete Kleinow.They wanted to test the concept of kids riding the back of an animated ant.Doug built the steel hinge jointed legs and I built the rest,finishing it off in green foam, Bondo and paint, followed by a hard clear coating.





THE ADDAMS FAMILY
    Beswick Productions.I built an armature for a 'Thing' puppet that Doug would animate on a blue screen stage to create a shot of Thing jumping across a row of lily pads.



LAND OF THE LOST
    Chiodo Brothers Productions. I sculpted a brontosaurus and a T-Rex puppet for the '90s iteration of the t.v. series. These were sculpted and cast over Peter Marinello armatures.


The stegosaurus puppet was sculpted by Earl Ellis. Both puppets painted by Charles Chiodo.

PUPPET MASTER 2
    Dave Allen Productions. Mainly a shop technician and on set puppeteer, but Dave kindly allowed me to animate a couple of shots of a puppet chained to a small stage. It was shot in Dave's shop store room doubling for an alchemists work shop in the film.

DEMONIC TOYS
    Dave Allen Productions.Dave needed a shot of wooden alphabet blocks tumbling on the floor and spelling out words as they came to rest. The shot was animated on the cement floor of a warehouse that was used for the films location shooting. I believe there were three cuts, one of which was cut from the film because of a camera or light bump. Chris Endicott stopped by and assisted me in for several hours on the last day of shooting.

ROBOT WARS
    Mark Rappaport supervised the construction of a scorpion like robot machine. I machined leg joints with hinges and swivels. Mark machined the main body and supervised the assembly and finish.



DOCTOR MORDRID
        Beswick Productions.Dave Allen asked Doug to construct two stop-motion puppets for this film. A mastodon skeleton and a T-Rex skeleton. They were for a sequence where the two skeletons come to life in a museum and fight to the death. Most of the model work and fabrication was done by George Wong and Brian Prosser. Doug and I assembled the armatures and I painted the finished puppets.





INFESTED/TICKS
        Beswick Productions. This film was originally called "Ticks". It was based on a script that Doug and I wrote which got picked up and altered radically. We supplied practical effects on set and several stop-motion shots. Most of the shots required two or more people to shoot because we were moving both the camera and the 'ticks' during exposure. For a typical shot I would animate the tick's legs,then Doug would pull the wire that dragged the tick forward, and I would turn the pan and tilt cranks on the tripod head, all during the relatively long camera exposure. That gave us both puppet and camera blur.


CABIN BOY
        Beswick Productions. This film had a stop-motion giant snow creature, a stop-motion mer-man and an animatronic talking cupcake puppet. I sculpted the snow creature and Scott Oshita built the snow creature armature. I assisted by building it's hands. There was also an armature built for the mer-man. Doug animated the snow  creature in all of the wide shots and a couple of the close ups. I also animated a couple of close ups. I animated the mer-man on a blue screen stage with a motion control camera push in, to simulate his travel forward.