Puppet Putty is on MTV!!!

Hi folks, I'm on the verge of "incromprehensibly excited" after receiving word today that my clay was used in Season 2, Episode 7 of "Greatest Party Story Ever". This showed up in a Facebook feed among animators who worked on it and when I commented that it seems like the colors would be difficult to keep from getting mashed and mixed together, Webster said that mixing the Dark White Puppet Putty with the other clay he's using helped with that. When I started making and selling clay, Marc and I never DREAMED it would be embraced by the professional stop motion community like it has. At the moment, it's being used on several top-secret upcoming productions. Clay animation has also been absolutely COMING ALIVE on Youtube lately, too- it's suddenly everwhere. Clay animation is coming BACK, bay-beee!

Putty Putty used in music videos for Primus!

Animator Webster Colcord recently directed and animated several music videos for the rock band Primus. Citing an absence of quality clay, I was tasked with formulating a mixture that combined well with the clay he already had, in order to improve its working properties in animation. The result was "Dark White", the slightly sticky untinted version of Puppet Putty Firm (Dark White is an inside joke- it's basically an ivory color, but I didn't want to re-print the labels for the 28 colors of the 'Putty, so I borrowed "Dark" from some of the other colors and "White" from the White, and combined the two. I figureed, if Gray is light black, then ivory is "dark white"). He liked it so much while working on "Candy Man", that he ordered more while he was working on the Michael Jackson-themed Les Claypool/Sean Lennon music video collaboration, "Bubbles Burst". Here are the music videos and an interview we did for Animateclay in which Webster talked about the making of "Bubbles Burst" and I talked about audio recording tricks. Combined, the videos have gotten almost 1,000,000 views. :-)




I've been a fan of Primus since the mid-90's and was inspired to learn to play bass guitar after hearing Claypool's signature style, so it was really an honor to get asked to make clay for these projects!

It Came From The Film School

Well, hello! It's been a few years, hasn't it? My name is Don Carlson, I'm a clay animator, and before going into where I've been all this time, I want to apologize for disappearing (while learning, and innovating). The fact is, I had the blog, the Youtube channel, and the secret double life as a humor writer where my band name was endlessly misinterpreted as something gross or illegal for "comical" effect, but didn't really have enough experience doing any of this stuff to get a job. That all would change forever in 2012- one of the best years of my entire life! There is so much to share, it's ridiculous. These last few years have been transformative, informative, and...popcornative (ok, I haven't really been eating that much popcorn, just wanted something with "ative" on the end of it). Everything's different, better, and the kind of amazing that makes a nerd go "squeeeeee!" First thing's first: Pram Maven does not mean what you probably are thinking. The first part is an acronym that references a specific type of computer memory used in Mac computers. After examining my internet footprint and being kind of ashamed of the fact I did not take it more seriously even as people were saying some pretty dark things and trying to confuse others with their (admittedly occasionally humorous) fabrications, I got an internship in the Summer of 2012 which became a job with a long-time friend's film production company and worked as a digital film editor for several months while also working at the regular job. The job entailed re-learning the Mac OS (X10) and getting acquainted with a digital tape deck and an offline workflow. Very different from what I had been doing independently.

On the day of the interview, I had just gotten off work and was carrying a large plate of glass home to animate clay in relief on when it shattered and cut both my arms. If this had been plate glass I would have been dead, but thankfully it was security glass from an armored truck that had replaced their window and left it with a "free" sign by the side of the road. This almost made me late for the interview, but after helping a neighbor sweep it up and getting some bandages, I hopped in the shower and put on a suit and tie. Injury or not, I was getting this job.

At the interview, the producer who was conducting it took one look at the bandages, I explained what happened, and he exclaimed, "WOW! I'm impressed that you still came in after all that!" Well, long story short, he hired me, and I got right to work. The next few weeks it was pretty much sink or swim- much to learn, and the boss had to go on vacation. So, somehow or another, I managed to run the show while he was gone with only a few questions here and there. All in all, it was a good experience and my first pro gig as an editor. After the first month, the check was more than I'd ever made before and there was a Claymation Class taught by the legendary Will Vinton, creator of the California Raisins. It ran every tuesday for 14 weeks and I was lit up like a Christmas tree, listening attentively to each lecture and excited to complete the animation assignments.

Mr. Vinton liked my caricature of him, which you can find in the video below, and he commented "well, I know what to lead the class reel with..." I thought he was joking and just being nice, but at the friends-and-family screening before the debut of our final projects in the Whitsell Auditorium of the Portland Art Museum, sure enough- the caricature was the first thing on the screen. AWESOME!
Morphing Excercise from Don Carlson on Vimeo.
Each of our final projects required weeks of planning and was directed by Will Vinton. He gave us different audio clips to choose from, and I picked the one from Meet The Raisins, which featured a talking character set in an office. He thought it would work well in a museum set, so I re-boarded it to fit that theme. The gag is that the carrot guy is a tour guide who is kind of jealous of the Raisins' success, and in his snooty way he shows disdain for him achieving great success as rock musicians and he ended up just being the guy who introduced them to museum-goers.

I need to look around for some of these pictures, but the set was built around a table that rigging could hang from to fly the puppet for the final shot where his feet aren't touching the ground. It could have been set up on rod supports, but the Claymation class covered the classic 80's techniques, which were all in-camera, so I went with fishing line with a metal piece suspended by moveable magnets which could be slid around the roof of the set, allowing the character to move through 3D space while being suspended by two strings to constrain his movement on at least one axis. This worked better than I thought it would, and the Raisin statue was made of aluminum foil for the body armature, duct taped to the top of a pill bottle, which had a duplicate bottle to swap in with "battle damage" for when it had to break apart after cracking straight through.

A Currant Affair - Final Project - Will Vinton Class 2012 from Don Carlson on Vimeo.

(behind the scenes pictures to follow-watch this space!) At the class project film premiere(unfortunately a close friend died of heart failure the night before, drawing a dark cloud over the proceedings), we had a Q&A in the Whitsell Auditorum afterwards, and a kid said "I really liked the exploding taco". It was supposed to be a mountain erupting, but the comment made my day and taught me to be more clear in how I stage set pieces so that it is less confusing for the audience to tell what is going on.

Lip Sync Excercise from Don Carlson on Vimeo.

That was actually a big problem on Blue Alien Summer, although its main goal- to make something that looked like a film despite a weak story- was successful: people have said it is very cinematic! Story is important though, and after that I never worried about what frame rate to use again- it's become irrelevant.

There is more to add, but I've been up for too long and will finish this later. At any rate, I am excited to tell you about the clay I was tinkering with in the Vinton class- as well as the follow-up class I took with Vinton's protege, Barry Bruce. Got some pictures from that, too. Another wonderful experience and something I never dreamed would happen in my lifetime.