#Will Vinton

[animatejournal]

The Adventures of Mark Twain Director: Will Vinton | USA, 1985

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Hershey's Kisses TV commercial stop motion puppet (c. 1986)

[bungowife]

I am number one noid fan

[gaykarstaagforever]

1) Dailymotion is still a thing? Wow.

2)

[90ssuperheroes]

Back in the day, we gobbled up anything with our favorite turtles on it. I remember convincing my mother to buy a bag. Did I eat them? Yes. We're they good? No. Imagine dumping a cup of salt on some packing peanuts and smothering with powdered basil and tomato. The best part was the commercial; made by Will Vinton studios (California Raisins)

[sweetpeauserboxes]

[id: a light blue userbox with a pastel blue border and pastel blue text that reads “this user is a huge fan of will vinton claymation, and wants to talk about the characters from the specials to others so badly! ” on the left is an image of will vinton and his creations. /end id]

[mad-prophet-of-the-airwaves]

The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985, Will Vinton, USA)

[acmeoop]

Boo. “Claymation Comedy of Horrors” (1991)

[taxi-davis]

Claymation Enjoy the Show Intermission

[adamcasey]

The California Raisins, Day 3

[twistedtummies2]

The Devils I Know - Number 10

Welcome to “The Devils I Know!” For this spooky time of year, from now till Halloween, I’ll be counting down My Top 31 Depictions of the Devil, from movies, television, video games, and more! Today we’ve reached the Top 10, and this Devil is a uniquely animated evil. Number 10 is…The Mysterious Stranger, from The Adventures of Mark Twain.

“The Adventures of Mark Twain” is a rather bizarre movie from 1985. It was the product of Will Vinton, the master of “Claymation” stop-motion animation, and has become a cult classic for its surreal tone and aesthetic style. The movie essentially tells the story of Mark Twain’s life through the eyes of his characters, as Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher go on a series of unusual and colorful adventures all based on different stories from Twain’s life and works. Arguably the single strangest scene in the film (and that’s saying a lot), and undeniably the scariest and most infamous part of the film, is the encounter with this character, inspired by the unfinished Twain novel by the same name: The Mysterious Stranger.

About halfway through the movie, Twain brings the children to a strange, dark void to meet the titular character. The Mysterious Stranger is a bizarre, ghostly figure, and right from the word go, we get the distinct feeling he’s…off. He introduces himself first as an angel, but when the children ask the angel’s name, he replies with a growl: “Satan.” That’s probably enough to send most people fleeing, but the Stranger behaves so kindly after that point, the children are happy to follow him into his own little world. The Stranger lives on a small island in the void, where he makes clay figures and buildings and all sorts of other things out of the earth around him, then brings them to life. At first, it all seems sweet and fun and charming…but things change when the living dolls begin to fight with each other, behaving with greed and arrogance. Satan sees this as annoying, and promptly squashes two of the figures flat beneath his hand, then summons an earthquake and storm, smiting the rest of them in its wake, before rendering the entire little world to dust. With all life erased, he proclaims: “I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is.” That’s scary enough, but things get worse when the children protest all this in fear, at which point Satan says, in a soothing tone: “Never mind them. People are of no value. We can make more sometime…if we need them.” It's the cold, callous, deeply unsettling way Satan does all this that makes the character so eerie and unnerving. He never expresses intense anger, in fact often sounding rather pleasant and even gentle…but the horror of his actions speak for themselves. This is reflected in the character’s design, as his mask-like face, which becomes increasingly more demonic the angrier he becomes, and turns into a skull near the end of the sequence. Now, apparently, Twain’s unfinished novel was actually about the SON of Satan, who went by the same name (Satan Jr., if you will), but even there, it’s implied he’s less a hellspawn and more just a continuation of the same, if that makes sense. He’s referred to as “Number 44,” indicating he’s the 44th Satan in line, and the fact he identifies himself as an angel, and behaves in the way he does, makes it possible he may just be the 44th incarnation of the same being. Of course, to anyone who doesn’t know about the incomplete book, all we see is the Devil in general. However you look at it, it’s the ambiguous and creepy nature of this character, who does such terrible things yet seems so gentle and even playful, that makes him such a deeply troubling character. The scene with the Mysterious Stranger is honestly more famous than the movie it’s from, and has been hailed as one of the most disturbing and yet expertly handled pieces of animation ever made. This is a very different kind of Devil…but that’s exactly what makes this particularly nightmarish, haunting scene so breathtaking and intriguing.

Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 9! HINT: He’s a particularly mysterious malefactor. (Pauses) Yeah, that hint is terrible, I know, just cut me some slack. :P

[hathousehappenings]

I watched a documentary about Will Vinton called Claydream a little bit ago and was surprised to see that they snuck in some WIP shots of an AiW Caterpillar story! These are from the Paperboy and the Scary Dog story that first appeared in Boo, Who? (episode 11). It's neat to see all the notes and things on the little paper clapboards. It looks like these were filmed in Feb of 1992, a little over a month before the show premiered on the D*sney Channel.

If you're a fan of Claymation or stop-motion animation, I would certainly recommend watching it. I wasn't able to find it to watch for free, so I rented it from Amazon. It's a love letter to Will Vinton and glances over his career and the events that created Laika studios in Oregon. It doesn't go in depth on a lot (in fact I feel like there might be chunks of information not included due to a lack of proper documentation) but it's still an interesting watch.

[gaykarstaagforever]

Gay Icons

Rex and Herb from Will Vinton's A Claymation Christmas Celebration (1987)

[tylersticka]

I’ve been told to avoid this fella, but I live for danger⁣

[randomrichards]

CLAYDREAM:

Man with the moustache

Put claymation on the map

Flew too close to sun