Gumby Fest Brings in the Biggest Names in Stop Motion

On June 14th 2014 the first ever Gumby Fest, a major film festal and celebration for Stop Motion animation will be taking place in Glendora, CA. Below is a reprint article from the press release from their blog announcing their world-class Stop Motion guests...

Academy Award-Winner Rick Baker Joins ‘Meet Gumby’s Gang’ Panel at Inaugural Gumby Fest in Glendora on June 14

Animators for ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ ‘Robot Chicken’ ‘Coraline’ to share stories from the Gumby studios

Glendora, CA – Academy Award-winner Rick Baker will join the “Meet Gumby’s Gang” panel at the premier Gumby Fest to be held June 14 in Glendora, California.

Gumby, the world’s original clayboy and pop-culture legend who starred in more than 230 TV episodes and a movie, “grew up” in Glendora, where the iconic TV series was produced from 1960 to the late 1970s by Clokey Productions.

The celebration of all-things Gumby as well as stop-motion animation will take place on the grounds of Glendora City Hall and Public Library at the corner of Glendora Avenue and Foothill Boulevard.

“Meet Gumby’s Gang” will be held at 2 p.m. in the Bidwell Forum at Glendora Library, preceded by other discussion panels.

Rick Baker won the first ever Academy Award-winner for Best Make-up/Hair Styling for An American Werewolf in London; other credits include Disney’s upcoming Maleficent, Men in Black,, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, and many others.

Joining Baker on the “Meet Gumby’s Gang” panel will be stop motion and visual effects pioneers who got their start at Clokey Productions:

· Joe Clokey is president of Clokey Productions/Premavision Studios. Son of Art and Ruth Clokey, the pioneering creators of Gumby, Clokey was raised as Gumby’s little brother. In fact, Gumby’s adventures first came to life in bedtime stories that Art Clokey invented for his children. Today, Joe carries on his parents’ legacy, introducing Gumby to the next generation of fans, as the head of Gumby’s animation studio and business affairs.

· Harry Walton began his professional film career in 1968 with Clokey Productions specializing in character animation as well as other areas of visual effects such as optical compositing, matte painting and compositing, plate photography, lighting and setup, stop motion puppet fabrication, miniature construction, visual effects supervision and animation direction. He worked on such films as Nightmare Before Christmas, The Abyss, James and the Giant Peach, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and more.

· Doug Beswick has more than 40 years of visual effects achievements to his credit. His work can be seen in such mega hits as Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Terminator, Aliens, Evil Dead 2, Gremlins 2, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and Beetlejuice. He began his career in special effects/animation in 1967 working at Clokey Productions, Doug worked on both the classic Gumby television show and the endearing Davey and Goliath program, building props, and later applying his animation skills.

· Norman DeCarlo first worked for Art Clokey to help him create 99 episodes of the Gumby television series. He then worked with Henry Selick to produce nationally televised commercials, MTV interstitials and his own private projects that eventually led Selick to direct The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone.

· Richard Zimmerman (Rich Zim) – Gumby was Rich Zim’s first professional animation job after graduating college back in 1987. Since then, he has animated on such projects as Pee Wee’s Playhouse, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline. Birdhouse, a 7-minute animated short he directed, played at over 25 festivals including Cannes and Sundance, where it won an award. He currently works on Robot Chicken and other feature films.

· Carl Jabloski completed two 30-minute specials and four Davey & Goliath 15-minute television episodes and later participated on a health series called I Am Joe’s Heart. After leaving Clokey Productions Jabloski’s career evolved into project/cost management for the theme park industry.

· Ron Dexter has been the head of production for Clokey Productions / Premavision since the early 2000s. His 30 years in the film industry has included directing and shooting TV commercials. He owned a studio in Hollywood for 20 years, and has shot films in 18 countries and 40 states. He has made numerous documentary films and worked on both feature films and TV shows. He made camera gyros for helicopter shots, steady cams (before they were developed commercially) and smooth track systems for dolly moves.

For the full schedule or more info visit: http://gumbyfest.net/festival-schedule

Gumby Fest

Comments

Aardman Co-Founder David Sproxton's Tips for Success in the Animation Industry, Part 1 (of 3): 3 Pre-Production Tips

Aardman founders David Sproxton (left) and Peter Lord (right) standing in front of Wallace & Gromit set for Variety (Photo by Charlie Gray) “It all started at a kitchen table,” says co-founder of Aardman Animations, David Sproxton, about the beginning of his career in animation, “Pete [Peter Lord] and I met as schoolkids….Pete and I got to be great mates and we started playing and thinking up stories. I was always interested in photography and kind of, I guess, the process thing about films….One day we got out the Bolex, stuck it up on a stand and actually just cut images out of color supplements. We’d obviously watched programs like Vision On , which obviously used a plethora of styles. Cut out is the easiest thing to do. We didn’t really understand cel animation or actually how you drew stuff. We just moved stuff around and did stuff with chalk drawings.” Earlier this year, Aardman, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of their studio, released a ...

Read full article »

Vincent & Puppet Scales

Tim Burton's Vincent is a masterpiece; the short was animated by the brilliant Stephen Chiodo . I do love that the short was shot in black and white film, ask any true film-lover and

Read full article »

Interview with Kangmin Kim, Director of Stop Motion Short Film, "Deer Flower"

Kangmin Kim animating the dream sequence from Deer Flower . Photo courtesy of Kangmin Kim. The experience of childhood is something like existing within a waking dream. In childhood, as in particularly vibrant dreams, the distinct and unique experience presents itself to simply exist in each moment without explanation or reflection – to become fully and wholly enveloped in each and every moment, the option of operating outside of which is somehow nonexistent. In that special time in one’s life, moments simply are . And yet, childhood, like dreams, is a fragile and temporary reality. It’s not until one “wakes” from childhood, by entering adulthood, that one can reflect upon and appreciate the past and, in retrospect, realize just how odd and unusual certain experiences might have actually been. Korean filmmaker and animator Kangmin Kim captures this feeling beautifully in his outstanding short film Deer Flower . Deer Flower tells the semi-autobiographical of auteur Kangmin...

Read full article »

Phil Tippett's "Mad God: Part 3" Fully Funded on Kickstarter!

The stop motion legend, Phil Tippet, has launched – and has now successfully funded – the third chapter in his beautiful and weird dystopian series of stop motion short films entitled Mad God , via crowdfunding the project through Kickstarter. WE DID IT! --- MAD GOD 3 kickstarter sucessfully funded ---- GREAT THANKS TO ALL ! --- — Phil Tippett (@PhilTippett) June 17, 2017 The project’s initial goal of raising $40,000 has been met and surpassed by financial backers with a final tally of $45,845 from the Kickstarter campaign , which ended yesterday. As Mr. Tippett explains in his Kickstarter video, the money will go towards feeding the crew working on the project out of Tippett studio in Berkeley, as well as to buy materials and to help “keep the adventure going,” as he explains in his Kickstarter video. Phil is a master of the craft of stop motion, which he's helped pioneer since the earliest work of his career. Starting in 1975 with his employment at Industrial Light ...

Read full article »

Interview with Nadine Buss, Cinematographer on Oscar® Nominated Stop Motion Short Film "Negative Space"

One of the surreal flashback scenes from Negative Space . Source: Vimeo. “These are my guidelines for lighting,” Nadine Buss, the cinematographer of the Oscar®-nominated short film Negative Space , tells Stop Motion Geek, “feel, re-explore sensations,” she says, only to then lightheartedly add, “and remember the lights you saw.” Feel . If Buss’s creative fingerprint on Negative Space could be described in just one word, it would be just that. A beautiful and heart wrenching story, Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter’s Negative Space – a stop motion short film based on a poem of the same title by Ron Koertge – is, in many ways, one story presented as two: One half of the narrative is of a young man – Sam – as he packs a suitcase for travel before then driving to the funeral home where his late father’s viewing is being held. It’s a narrative colored by Buss in the hard, icy light of winter, which contrasts sharply with the sunny, warm light in which the second story is pa...

Read full article »

Behind the Scenes of "Robocop 2" at Tippett Studios and how "Jurassic Park" Changed Special Effects Forever

A depressingly large percentage of Hollywood movies boast a gratuitous amount of potential and possibility and yet, for one reason or another, often fall far, far too short to live up to the films they seem to have the potential of being. Although it’s a shame that many of these films have a stupendous level of production value and talent but are often often overlooked, as production value and talent are seen as secondary and supplementary to a quality story – the special effects work done on such second-rate films sadly go unrecognized the most often. An immutable fact stands strong – mediocre films, no matter the level of talent and amount of time poured into producing their special effects, are seen and remembered as nothing but wasted potential…or worse. Yet few box office bombs have had special practical effects work as groundbreaking, especially in the stop motion realm, and yet unfortunately remains unrecognized in every respect than the 1990 film Robocop 2 , both an irrefutabl...

Read full article »

Interview with Heather Colbert, Filmmaker Behind The Music Video for Tom Rosenthal’s “How Have You Been?”

Hypnos looking on at the moon. Photo courtesy of Heather Colbert. “After talking with Tom, I just let the track play, while I drew or noted down ideas that came into my head,” Heather Colbert—a Bristol-based animator and filmmaker—tells Stop Motion Geek about the origins of her newest project: creating, almost single-handedly, the music video for English singer-songwriter Tom Rosenthal’s “How Have You Been?”—a haunting and beautiful acapella piece off his latest album, Z-Sides . “He told me the album was about sleep and so the images that came to me were of nocturnal and natural things. I also saw a connection in the beautiful lyrics to a character living with mental health issues, especially in the line ‘I woke up, but it didn’t go away’. So I began to see a creature trying their best to get on with their task, but being hindered by the fear of the world that they inhabit.” Hypnos (left) and Shadow (right) in the film. Photo courtesy of Heather Colbert. The third musi...

Read full article »

Interview with Matt Bollinger, Painter and Animator Behind Stop Motion/Painting Hybrid Short Film "Between the Days," a Beautiful Portrait of Routine, Unfulfillment, and Despair in Middle America

"Before Work" finished painting featured in Between the Days . Photo courtesy of Matt Bollinger. Often – far too often – we forget the true weight of our actions, our everyday decisions, ranging from those big to small. And, in forgetting, we forget ourselves – who we truly are, where we have been, what we have done, how we have gotten here, to this very place in this very moment. For we are nothing if not the sum total of all our decisions, our actions…even the most minute, even those – perhaps especially those – made in the thrumming humdrum of the everyday: the act of rising from our bed and reaching over to flick off the alarm resting on our bedside table, lighting a cigarette, collecting yesterday’s trash before moving on to more, equally menial tasks. Moments spent alone, in ostensible comfort – the comfort provided us by 21st century accoutrements so many of us have grown to take for granted. Whether we are aware of it or not, each of our actions leave a ma...

Read full article »

Boinx's iStopMotion for iPad Review

Before I jump into the review i'm going to say that Boinx is not paying me to do this review and the following is my personal opinion only . With that being said let's get to it shall we? Before we get into it I would like to show you some clay test animation that I made with iStopMotion... Untitled from SMG on Vimeo . The first thing that shows up when you open iStopMotion is a quick Stop Motion video which runs you through the key features of the app for instance: the capture button, playback, and adjusting your camera settings. Let me say that this video is of the poorest quality of animation, it's just terrible. But, if you stop to think about it, there is a good explanation for this; my guess is that Boink doesn't want beginners to look at animation that is the equivalent of Coraline and comparing their own work to it. This app itself is very straightforward. Directly below the welcome video is a plus button which if you tap creates a new proje...

Read full article »

King Kong [1933]

Yes, it's back to the olden days, back when the idea of Stop Motion was the brainchild of Willis O' Brien. King Kong , is the most influential movie in history as far as I'm concerned. Willis O' Brien, was born on March 2, 1886 in Oakland, California. He did run away at the age of 13 but, as most do after running away, returned at the age of 17. Now into the Stop Motion aspect of it all. Finding himself with some time to kill one afternoon,

Read full article »

Stop Motion Geek

Search This Blog