This Week In Obituaries: Will Vinton

We remember a great.

 

Stop motion animation legend Will Vinton, best known for works such as The PJs, Gary and Mike, California Raisins, and countless others, has passed away at the age of 70. The Oscar and Emmy award-winning producer is best known for inventing a technique in stop-motion known as “foamation”. After years of mastering claymation, he felt the art form was becoming a tad too cumbersome and instead turned to puppet characters that were produced from a rubber foam thereby making the models more maleable and easier to work with in production. This technique is still used today in series like Robot Chicken, Supermansion, and countless of other series that had been produced the last few decades.

Will Vinton’s studio was taken over in 2000 by Nike where it was renamed Laika which has gone on to produce a number of animated films like Coraline, but Will still remained active in the animation scene right up until his passing.