I have transcribed the interview here for your interest:

And that famous Man in the Yellow Hat meets his maker.

“Hey George, say hello to Entertainment Tonight.”

We’ve got more monkey business for you on Entertainment Tonight this weekend.

Baby Boomers grew up curled up in an armchair reading the tales of a curious monkey named George. Now, a new generation gets in on George’s adventures on video and we went to visit the young at heart guy who’s doing the work.

“This is George. He lived in Africa. He was a good, little monkey and always very curious.”

That curious little monkey has been a favorite with kids since the late 1930’s. Naturally, we were curious about how George and the gang came to life.

“Hey George, say hello to Entertainment Tonight.”

This is John Matthews, the animator who created the video in his southern California studio using a process called stop motion.

“This is one second of movie film. There are 24 little pictures here. That means, if I want to move George here, I have to move him 24 times for one second.”

These home movies John gave us show the process. After each little movement, John takes a picture with a camera. Many moves and several hours later, this is the result.

“In a half hour, you have about 35,000 little moves like that. That’s why we usually have about four to six setups going at once. Most people ask, ‘When is the film going to be done? In the year 2000?’”

Obviously, it is a very time consuming process. It took John more than a year to complete the video. He showed us the secret to what the stars are really made of.

“It’s an armature. It’s the size of the Man with the Yellow Hat. You can do about any movement possible for a human skeleton and even some that can’t be done with human skeletons.”

As John’s home movie shows, each puppet had interchangeable faces with different expressions.

“The Man with the Yellow Hat had hundreds of these face plates that came off when he talked. It was really a pain to animate because you had to change his little eyes every frame. It would take ten minutes sometimes have him say a word like ‘George.’”

John gave away some other secrets as well. The clouds George is flying through are really made of cotton. The waterfall in this scene isn’t really water at all – it’s plastic. George is able to swing through the jungle with the help of thread. For John, making family videos is a family business, with his four kids and wife Nikki all involved. It’s an ideal situation – John gets to spend time with his kids and be a kid at heart at the same time.

“It’s like magic. You take these puppets…they’re not alive; they’re puppets. You do stop motion by moving them frame by frame and getting out of the way of the camera, they come alive. They walk, they talk, they run, have bad habits… That is fun.”

Curious George is in video stores now. By the way, the books are still very much in demand for kids in the 90’s. Fifteen Curious George stories are still in print.

I first got into animation in 1985 at secondary school when a good friend of mine and I were acting. And were the only people acting and working in the art department as well. And he was doing a film for his art project. And he asked me, can I act in it? He won an award for that film, he came back to me and said, “Look, I have another film to do and I want to make it puppet animation and I know you can sculpt,” because I was doing sculpturing at the time in the art room and so from then on I started sculpting for him and he was making films. And, 14 years I became his production designer and in the end animator as well.

The animator comes in and it is a dance, if you like, between you and the puppet. The puppet has it’s own integrity – its physical, it has knees, it has arms and fingers. It will move in a certain way. A computer animation you could bend any way, it can be spaghetti arms if you don’t put the joints in the right place. A puppet animation can’t – it can only move in the way it’s actually been designed. And so, you have to work with those set of limitations and create those gestures. I mean, early on you try to create a puppet, which can, if it needs to play the piano, has articulated fingers. If it only needs to run, you can just design fists. So the perfectly designed puppet for the gesture, but once you got the puppet, how do you use those internal mechanisms to be able to create the right gesture?

Animation, I think, is broad spectrum because everyone from kids to adults can enjoy animation depending on content and quality. Um, there’s good animation, there’s bad animation. There’s very literal animation in that it’s figurative. If we look at Wallace and Gromit, for example, it’s like a transliteration of film into animation. It’s just every character you know, every — it coul all be replaced by people. The fact that Gromit’s a dog is irrelevant; it could easily be a person and Davis McGraw and the like. You’ve seen these characters in film and what Nick Parker is doing is just merely transposing that to animation. I think that kind of misses the advantage that animation has, is because you’re creating a world which the audience is ready to sit down and go, “I – I wish to believe in this world,” or, or, or, “open to that world.” So you can take them on a journey to anywhere. So to merely replicate reality is missing an opportunity. So therefore, I think there’s a broad spectrum, as I said, of available destinations for animation and audiences of course, as well.

If you go to, uh, Bug’s Life, for example. The bugs, or the ants, they have four legs they don’t have six. Why? Because they’re trying to make them more like us. They’re anthropomorphizing them so that we can emote better with them. That blue color: they don’t actually look like ants. Where as, the enemy who they don’t want us to have an emotion with, those flying grasshopper-y things, they are grasshoppers, aren’t they? They’ve got scars, they’ve got all the texture, they’re as alien to humans as possible.

Well, in Dad’s Clock, I had a puppet, which was all tin and brass. Of course he took months to build, there’s no way I could build another one. The idea was just to make him stronger, or repair damage should it be required. Yeah, a lot of experience has taught me to build things well to begin with because a lot of animation is just in your feel. Like how much does that joint move? You don’t want to constantly be bringing in a measuring device.

Now with Max (from Mary and Max), for example, he’s a beast, and he’s heavy and he’s depressed. And when you’re heavy and depressed, your weight becomes your enemy. You’ve gotta drag it along. But when you become, proud and strong, suddenly your weight becomes your friend and you can actually use that momentum and start actually knocking down doors with it. And it’s the way you carry that, the way you carry your body is what defines how happy or whatever emotion you’re trying to bring across.

You’ll often see animators walking up and down rooms and, you know, actually performing themselves to feel bodily what it is so they can then transfer that bodily sensation to the puppet. Um, or a lot of animators have mirrors on their stage, they can go (*he makes a couple of facial expressions here*), and just remind themselves of those particular things. As Nick Duncan once said, “You never finish your film, you just run out of time”. and that’s true, you always want to go back and open this bit or fix this but you’ve gotta know when to – like in any creative endeavor – when to stop designing and when to start presenting.”

Gumby

Interviewer: Ok we’re talking about the Gumby series in the 80’s and how things were different. Has the audience changed at all? Have the kids become more sophisticated in their viewing? Do you notice any differences?

Art: Well our stories were a little more sophisticated. We brought in historical things and Don Quixote. I’m always wondering about. They say kids are getting more sophisticated watching television, they’re getting more hyper. I don’t see that happening here. When my son shows his children Gumby and I show it to other children here, it’s still complete engrossment, as though they’re hypnotised and can’t get away from their screen. Fantastic babysitters! Up until around 7 years of age, I really don’t care much about reaching the older children. The Catholic Church used to say ‘give us your children until they’re 5. You can have them afterwards.’

Interviewer: In 1995 you produced ‘Gumby: The Movie’ That was the first feature that Gumby was in. How did that come about? Why did you decide to do a feature?

Art: I wanted to do a Gumby feature for many years and we suddenly got the opportunity and the money. With that too we put much of the money was made from doing the series from Lorimar into the movie and Lorimar had bought the equipment for us, camera and lights and space and they were all there ready to go after 1988 after we stopped producing the series. So we produced the movie at a terribly low price. It should have cost at least 6 million dollars but we did it for less than half of that. The animators were working for half salary actually, instead of $1200 a week they were getting $750 a week and then they went right over to Disney and James and the Giant Peach and they got $2000 a week.

Interviewer: How did the film do?

Art: It never had a chance to do anything because I foolishly gave the film to a distributor in New York who was a crook. He didn’t have sense of ethics so he told us he was going to advertise for so much money and he didn’t advertise. He got it in 20 of the top markets of all the big cities and he didn’t advertise. It was in San Francisco and Los Angeles and nobody knew it was there. Except people who would se the little notice on the movie page but no other advertising.

Interviewer: Now today in 2001 Gumby is being used again on ABC

Art: ABC yeah. And Disney, we just finished negotiating a contract with Disney, they want to do a movie with people and Gumby. They also wanted to do a new series with me as an Executive Producer, that would be interesting.

We got them to agree to do most of it in clay animation. We use computers for special scenes because computer animation, no matter how refined, looks artificial. Like in cartoon and clay animation the artist is hands on, he has his paintbrush connected to his nervous system, though hi hand, through his heart and his brain but not in a computer. When you go through this electronic network with a button, you push a button here and a click there, the artist has nothing to do with it. His nervous system is not involved.

Interviewer: Why do you think Gumby remains popular after almost 50 years?

Art: Well, Hans Christian Anderson wrote some stories and they’re still popular. I think it’s just because they didn’t do it really to make money, they did it because they loved doing it for art and they loved children I suppose and people. As I’ve said Gumby started out not to make money but to give the children something of value on television. I didn’t need the money in those days I was making television commercials for Coca-Cola and Budweiser. Doing clay animated Gumby was an interesting challenge. And I had my two children.

Interviewer: Were your children influential in the series? Did they watch Gumby?

Art: Oh yeah. I told them stories every night before they went to sleep. That was an act of love for your children so I considered every Gumby story was an act of love for children. Love, love, love as the Beatles said.

Interviewer: What is your philosophy regarding merchandising and character toys?

Art: Oh I didn’t tell you that. I bought the series and all the right from NBC back in 1959 maybe and NBC hadn’t gotten off the ground as far as merchandising was concerned. I decided that because we had such a good rapport with the parents at the station that I didn’t want to give the parents the impression that I was trying to exploit their children for products or make their children buy our products. So for 7 years from 1957 to 1964 I didn’t allow any merchandising. Then in 1964 some people told me that a lot of children were asking for little Gumby dolls that they could hold while they were watching Gumby on TV. So we decided to form the Gumby Toy Corporation and put out the first Gumby bendable and I got such good response from people I was so glad I was putting them out. That was very idealistic, I studied for the ministry so it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Interviewer: What advise would you give to an aspiring producer, what would you say to them?

Art: To inspire a producer?

Interviewer: For someone who as just starting out as a producer

Art: It all came about so naturally with me, I don’t know, just if they want to be a producer I thin they should search inside themselves to see why. If it’s just to make money, that’s not good, if it’s to do something for their fellow man or fellow woman or serving society in some way. Service to society, that’s why I’m still keeping myself alive and as young as possible so I can service society more so that new Gumby films maintain their integrity.

Interviewer: What do you consider your biggest career highlight, what are you especially proud of?

Art: Some of the films I’ve written, stories. I don’t know, they all came out of my subconscious so it was like I’d go into like a daydream and I’d write a story and it would come from somewhere, some news would come. I remember Joe Clokey people would ask him about his compositions of music and he would say ‘It’s just the muses I don’t know where it comes from’ it comes from cosmic consciousness.  I don’t believe we’re the doers, we don’t do these things, we’re not the real directors of our life. Our true self is the director, which is, I believe part of the overall cosmic consciousness or god so I don’t take any credit for it.

Interviewer: Did Joe Clokey live to see any of your accomplishments.

Art: Yes, yes. I remember he was travelling on a frator travelling across Europe to Paris and to sent him a telegram that I’ just gotten the contract signed for the David and Goliath series, we got the NBC series before that. So that was a great pleasure to him.

It’s been a big miracle.

Arts Biological Father (Farrington)

Interviewer: The last question we ask our interviewees is ‘how would you like to be remembered?

Art: As a lover of children, a server of society. I’d like to be remembered as someone who cared for everybody and tried to act that out in whatever I do. Love, love, love. At the Hard Rock Café, Isaac Tigrett, he’s also a devotee of Sri Sathya Sai Baba and he had pictures of Sai Baba in his new House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard and he has the sayings ‘Help ever hurt never’. Don’t worry be happy, what are the other sayings? I can’t remember them right now

- End of Interview -

The photo is of Art’s father. He died in a car accident when Art was 9 years old. This photo inspired Gumby’s bump on his head. Art fondly remembers his father and always noting the quif in his hair shown in the graduation from high school photo.

“The skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts were quite an ambitious thing to bite off because I never animated multiple figures. And we wanted to have seven skeletons fighting three men. We had seven stuntmen each portraying one of the skeletons and the actors would rehearse with the stuntmen, so that would give them a chance to count their moves and see just where they had to stop their movements in order to give the impression that they were fighting with the skeleton.

Jason and The Argonauts

I had to take about four and a half months on that particular sequence which only lasted for five minutes. It took four and a half months in the front of the animation camera to animate seven skeletons because many times I would only average thirteen frames a day.”

Ray goes on to talk about the history of stop motion and how he was inspired by Willis O Brien..

“The combination of live action and animation goes way back to the silent days. We use models of course unlike Roger rabbit and some of the other cartoons we see today. We used a dimensional model which blends much more closely with the live action than a flat drawing such as you saw in Mary poppins.

Then of course Willis O’Brien on the last world combine of live action with animation. And King Kong was the really his highlight of the combination. I wandered into Grauman’s Chinese theater in Hollywood boulevard some years ago in 1933 when I was the tender age of thirteen. And I haven’t been the same since. I  just found that this picture haunted me so, so I had to find out how it was done.”

Harry then talks about how he created his own first series of stop motion animation shorts..

“ And when I found out about the glories of stop motion animation, I started to experiment in my garage and after that it gradually developed from my hobby to a  profession. I had the great pleasure of working with George Pal for a while, before the war he was doing a series of puppetoons of the time. But they were very stylized figures and they were not the same type of drama that I was really interested in.

Mother Goose

Mother Goose Stories.

After the war I made my own series of puppet films. I made a series of five films. I called them Mother Goose stories. I funded the films myself. They were very easy to make because I didn’t pay myself a salary. It was sort of one man job.  My family helped me out very much. My father became interested in it, my mother dressed the figures. So it was more or less a family enterprise. The plaster heads were all extreme expressions. They, I made one placid expression and then carved maybe to make ten casernes and carved each one slightly different into extreme expressions. And then I’d dissolve into eight frames from one head to the other.

Of course in red riding hood, the wolf was very dear to my heart because it was the type of thing I wanted to do. Later on, when I got involved with dinosaurs and pre-historic animals, of course they are all creatures of fantasy and I found them much more enjoyable to work with than just a normal character.

We found the melodrama was very useful for the medium of dimensional animations and of course it is always been used with dinosaurs. Willis O’Brien, my mentor, he used the dinosaur and the gorilla animations. Well after king Kong,  he was my hero.  And I called him up with MJM one time, he was very courteous and encouraging and we became friends and later on when he got involved with Mighty Young (1949), he chose me his assistant. Again a gorilla, a nice kind gorilla, very sympathetic and it didn’t have the same impact of course that King Kong had.”

Ray Moves to the UK.

“Both Charles Schneer and myself came to England originally to make two films and we’ve been here ever since. This was way back in 1960. After the seventh voyage the studio had an old script called Mysterious Island.

I took the shell of the crab, made a mechanism that would go inside specifically for animation. Then you can make the crab to do what exactly you want him to do. We wanted to do some close ups of all the intricate mechanisms in the mouth. So, we got six live edible crabs and when we put them under the lights, of course they got very languid, and they all fell asleep I think. I wondered how you know when a crab is asleep. And that evening we ate our actors. I think Hitchcock would have been pleased.”

Ray talks about how Sound and Music in Stop Motion Animation brings it to life

“The music is very important. I, I have always felt 50% of the success of a fantasy film is the music. The music hightens the emotions and makes the whole thing bigger than life!

.

You see, medusa is quite a complicated figure. She has twelve snakes in her hair and each snake has to be animated. You roll her eyes by using a pencil eraser, and each frame of them you move them slightly until you get them into the position you want. And inside her lips, she has little levers that give her a chance to have some sort of mobile features.

These types of pictures are not a directors picture. They have to be laid out ahead of time in a very careful way so that they can be made for a reasonable cost. The pictures laid out many times before the director is even brought on to the scene. He has to handle the actors naturally. But the actual film is laid out by Charles and myself and the writer.

I’m retired from making films because it does take too much of your life. We spent three years on the clash of the titans, and there’s long time in preparation and long time in, after everybody goes home and they go on another picture on rest of the crew, maybe do two pictures but I am still putting the first one together. But I’m in hopes that one day that there will be a viable museum that will house all the materials  because it is actually is the bridge between Willis O’Brien’s work and the work of today. I have had a great success practically, say 90% in doing what I wanted to do I did. I’m told the stars of my films were my creatures because most of them received the best write ups.”

Cletus Clay is a unique computer game that uses stop motion animation techniques. The clay characters in the game are all handcrafted by Sarah Webb  of  TunaSnax – home of Tuna, developers of Cletus Clay.

Below is a transcribed interview with Sarah and Alex Amsel talking about Cletus and the stop motion design behind the game.

Sarah Webb: Cletus Clay is cool and interesting because we made it.

Alex Amsel: Yeah, pretty much.

Sarah Webb: and We’re cool.

Alex Amsel: Yep.

Alex Amsel: Yeah Cletus Clay  is homage back to the 1980’s, 1990s arcade games. And this time we’re doing it as we are doing it with clay.  And the  ??  Is that those games were really really entertaining. They had a set of humor about. They didn’t take themselves too seriously. And I think that is one of the nice things about Cletus. When you hear Cletus talk you know he doesn’t takes himself seriously. He’s the funniest game character that has been for many years. Hi, I am Alex Amsel. I’m the managing director of Tuna.

Stop Motion-Puppet-CletusClay - Copyright - TunaSnax - home of Tuna, developers of Cletus Clay.

Sarah Webb: I am Sarah Webb. I am the stop motion artist here at Tuna.

Why stop motion game?

Alex Amsel: We wanted to do something that looks a little bit different, more original. And so we started working with guy called Anthony Flak. He is a stop motion animator.

Average day of Cletus Clay team?

Alex Amsel: Anthony is based in New Zealand and that means he has an eleven hour time difference. So my morning starts talking to Anthony. And as he so starts motor making with Sarah. What we are doing is actually, doing  the interesting which is how the game plays. So my typical job is to generally coming and speaking to Anthony, get Cletus running around and beating up aliens and finding new ways to make the aliens die.

Sarah Webb: Anthony does a load of level designs, which is what we base our model designs upon. So there are these really long sketches that he does using Photoshop.  So we go through those and work out what models need to be made for each level. And for me, I tend to go to make another sketch, particularly if it’s a big model , just so that I can firmly establish in my head what kind of model I’m trying to make. And then I can send them back to Anthony, and he can say that’s really good or no no no, that’s totally not I wanted to for that level.

Sarah Webb: This is chicken house mark II which is a model  I built for level 1 of Cletus Clay. It took about 12 hours to make.

Sarah Webb: It’s all squishy!

Alex Amsel: I kill stuff. that’s my day, mainly aliens.

Why your game is unique?

Sarah Webb: I guess it is its tactile nature. It’s like when you watch a film like Coraline or Fantastic mister fox,  because what you’re looking at are a set of still images. It has its own little em, idiosyncrasies. And so people can pick up on that ,as you can’t really mimic that with any medium which is why clay is quite special.

Alex Amsel: And the interesting thing for me is I’m a pro ??. I have to work with all the art work produced by the artists. As he gets, you never quite know what you’re going to get. And because you never catch your way and look at it at anytime and they can take a slight different photo of it. You put it in the actual game and you can see the thumb prints, when you are actually playing the game and that’s really different from doing CGI. CGI is really really dull in comparison and lifeless.

What was the first feedback so far?

Alex Amsel: There are people who didn’t like it. We don’t have to lie.

Sarah Webb: No, we don’t have to lie. There was a very little negative feedback from we trying to both the scenario came out. And there was one Japanese who called, who played the same level for about 10 times, over and over again because he said he can’t stop playing it which was really awesome.

Alex Amsel: He kept playing over and over again.

Sarah Webb: Yeah

Bad moments?

Sarah Webb: Mark hid one of my clay models and said that it had been squashed and there was a moment of gullibility where  I did think he was serious and there was this model that took me 12 hours to make had been squashed and the evidence has been swept away and it can’t be produced and it was cake and that was pretty bad.

Alex Amsel: Anthony had  a very bad day all playing to making all the clay models. This was supposed to be the first previous game of Cletus. And we got back home and his house was burning down with all his discs and all his models, everything he’d been doing back for back two years. And, luckily he’d been showing the game to a friend, and his friend had the discs. So he didn’t lose all his works completely, just his house and his belongings.

Favourite character?

Sarah Webb: I am gonna be with one of the bunnies. The bunnies were cute. There were really cute clay bunnies so it might be a bunny. And you could be the really cute gun terror.

Alex Amsel: I can’t be the gun terror because it’s destructive.

Happy memories?

Sarah Webb: The most exciting moment for me the first time I saw was something I had created actually in the game.  It was just a little test level. Cletus running back and forth and I was “that’s my tree!”

Alex Amsel: And there’s been a lot of things on Cletus. But a friend of mine Betamin Weirs, the first game I ever made that was so commercially was going to the shop and seeing it, in the shop in like a top 10. And of course it wasn’t a no. 1 but  what I did do is picked up all the copies and moved into no. 1. And I did that in every shop I went in to and so all around Sheffield as well.

Deadlines?

Alex Amsel: There’s been a lot of learning on the way because there is no model to follow, no one has ever done this before in the way we are doing it. So, some deadlines we’ve met but other deadlines we missed badly I have to admit. But it’s inherent when you’re trying to do, when you’re doing research and development. We’re doing new things therefore, some objects just go wrong and we have to do it differently.

Your experience?

Alex Amsel: 14 years worked on platforms from the older Amiga days, and now working across onto the IPad, the latest platform we’re working on. And I think the experiences we had across all these different products and all the different platforms, working with a wide range of clients and licences and now we work with clay. I think it makes us interesting and I’ve got experiences that so varied that we have a lots of things to table.

Sarah Webb: Yes, it is really good to see the clay graphics on the ipad. I think they were really well. I know we’re still developing the actual mechanics of the game but even playing upside down and backwards. It’s still pretty fun.

Industry nowadays?

Alex Amsel: Something I think is interesting, that is happening more and more now is more and more people playing games on facebook or console or on their iphone, I think there’s a quite a lot of scope for new products to be created or appetised by creating a game around those products instead of traditional boring advertisements, which tended to speak – 30 seconds adverts on tv or a boring flash ad on the web. I think creating proper interactive, interesting adverts, which is our base of the game. I think that’s the move we really would like to get involved with.

Scribble - Prototype for Flipbook Animation

 Students Penn Greene, Ryan Thurmer, Chris Parker and Alexis Stepanek received a $2,500 top prize for their Scribble handheld animation prototype.
at the  University of Michigan, US.

A small group of innovative University of Michigan students with an interest in animation has brought the old-school flip book into the 21st century with the “Scribble”, a handheld touchscreen toy that turns digital drawings into flipbook stop motion animations.

With a plastic-tip pen, users hand-draw and save a series of consecutive images, which the Scribble then plays back in sequence to create the illusion of movement (once saved, drawings can be edited). A functional prototype of the device recently netted first place in a toy design competition co-sponsored by the University of Michigan College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship, and Giddy Up Toys.

To make their product, University of Michigan Art and Design undergrads Penn Greene, Ryan Thurmer, Chris Parker, and Alexis Stepanek ripped electronics from an Asus Eee PC. They specially ordered their touchscreen and custom-wrote the Scribble software. The device also comes with a built-in camera for those who want to go the stop-motion animation route.

The Scribble grew out of a December focus group in which student designers asked third-graders what they wanted for the holidays. “Many wanted interactive touchscreen devices such as iPods or Nintendo DSes,” Thurmer said. “Using this information, we reflected on vivid memories of creating flip books as children. We knew we wanted to recreate those experiences and memories, but in a more environmentally friendly and technological way, without the use of paper.”

The Scribble has a touchscreen, and you sketch  on it with a plastic tip pen. Then when you’ve drawn and saved your first image, the lines of that image change from black to grey. You can then draw your second image over the top of the first one, using its gray lines as a guide for the progression of your animation. When you’ve saved the second image, the lines of the first one will disappear, but the lines of the second will still be there to guide you as you draw the third. Get the idea?

It was created by man called “John”. I will let the description speak for itself as follows:

“My brother created this project in 1978 when he was 18 years old . He built the model of the Starship Enterprise bridge. He made all the clothes ect. for the dolls and spent tedious hours animating the characters. He dubbed in the audio after he copied the super 8 footage on to a beta tape The animation was done from his memory of the episode because VCRs were not invented when he did this project. My hope is that this gets the recognition it deserves. RIP John.”

The puppets were made from 1970’s GI Joe action figures. John made all the costumes and the set himself. Some of the comments on the video are justifiably complimentary.

stoneman127 What’s so fantastic about this is that the dolls/figures of the characters move so smoothly, lively, not stiff. You can tell a lot of work went into this. This is really top class stuff. And this was done before all the high tech camera equipment and special effects were available. It’s truly an amazing piece of work. This is really great!

grandehillusion Very impressive !!!
your brother had a lot of talent, worthy of Ray Harryhausen.
It is a very beautiful tribute has its work that to diffused it on YouTube.
Thanks for sharing.

I have started watching the original series again recently having received a gift of the Complete Blue Ray DVD box set. They have enhanced some of the original special effects and cleaned up the images. It has been done with sensitivity and does not spoil the overall feel. Recommened as is John’s fine work above.

Disneys' Familyfun - iKITMovie

It was Recommended by FamilyFun digital manager Samuel Mead and kids, Ruby, age 8, and Finn, 5 (plus  cousins Cedar, 15, Silas, 11, Matia, 12, and Noah, 9) – Their tips were ..

Our Tips

Stop-motion animation programs are compatible with most digital video cameras and some digital still cameras (check before you download). I had to adjust my camera’s settings from HD to DV before beginning.

For a more professional look, we set our camera on a tripod and shot against a flat, brightly lit sheet of white paper.

To inspire my young animators, I showed them some of the many finished works posted online. The kids were particularly jazzed by a short called “Western Spaghetti” (eatpes.com).

Also we got an really nice article by Karin Piper author of “Charter Schools – The Ultimate Guide for Parents” about us on Examiner.com.

Karin is a speaker, school choice advocate and author of award winning Charter Schools: The Ultimate Handbook for Parents. Karin provides communications and tools necessary for parents to become informed decision makers in the expanding world of education options. She also works with various organizations in engaging with surrounding communities and creating dynamic relationships with families. Karin can be contacted through Karin@theeducationchoiceexpert.com or visit her website at charterschoolmom.com.

NEWS : The UK’s famous art gallery, the Tate and Aardman studios have teamed up for an ambitious project to create a feature movie made entirely by children. Aardman will spearhead this 3Million pounds sterling project by organising contributions from children in the UK to create a movie which will be launched as part of the 2012 Olympics celebrations. Aardman will hold workshops around the UK hoping to directly involve thousands of children’s hand drawn animation cutout backdrops and characters as well as recording sound effects , voices and ideas.

“In this age of the creative economy where ideas are the driving force, discovering and nurturing creative ideas in children is of vital importance,” said Aardman Chairman Dave Sproxton.

“We want children to be involved at every level and believe that the spontaneity and creativity of the children will create a film that is as inspiring as it is entertaining.”

Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of Tate, said: “We’re giving children the opportunity to work at the coalface and really use their own creativity. This is about stimulating creativity among young people. It is a natural way of extending the education work that we do and capturing the interest of young people in the visual.”