The Art & Craft of Stop Motion Animation, from historical to current modern use ... including Retro & Classic Special FX ... miniatures, models, matte paintings, forced perspective tricks, in-camera effects, etc.
Among the few craftsmen who specialize in classic stop-motion creature and character puppet fabrication, Eduardo Oropeza stands out. Hailing from Mexico, Eduardo brings a unique twist to the tradition. Unlike many of his peers who gravitate towards CGI or digital effects animation, Eduardo has chosen to immerse himself in this hands-on creative niche. By doing so, he continues the legacy of the iconic stop-motion animation master, Ray Harryhausen.
Eduardo has collaborated with the exceptionally talented animator >>> Justin Rasch. I hope they continue to work together, as they would make a formidable team. As an independent production studio, they could offer their services in mixed media and stop-motion animation. Traditional animation will always captivate audiences, despite the prevalence of CGI and the current surge of A.I. generated animations.
Justin collaborates with various puppet fabricator artists, tailoring each puppet character design to be more stylized or cartoon-esque as needed. Eduardo contributed to the Del Toro / Gustafson, Oscar winning 'Pinocchio', working with the 2nd unit production team in Guadalajara, Mexico. If Eduardo were to come to Portland, Oregon which is currently a hotbed for stop-motion animation, his creative talents would undoubtedly be in high demand!
Eduardo has much social media content and I cannot post the many photos or videos here, but instead, these are the links ... his handle is TRexProduction3190
Take a look at this unique collaboration ...Eduardo Oropeza's detailed realistic stop motion puppets and Justin Rasch's awesome animation ... fabrication & stop motion, all hands-on tactile REAL!
STOP MOTION WORKS 'Seal' - REAL Hand-Made Certified™ ( A.I.)
Long ago, I actually crossed paths with persons who worked on Beyond T-Rex. Her name Shelley Smith and also her brother Tim Synder, both involved with the the stop motion production for Hall Train Studios in Canada. Years later, Shelley eventually traveled down to Portland, Oregon and then to SF bay area to work on some stop motion projects.
It might surprise you that the dinosaur armatures were WIRE ... NO ball & sockets! Shelley revealed this to me and I think, I might has seen a couple of photos that Tim emailed me. It did not occur to me to ask how the animation was so smooth? They perhaps used some kind of customized home made frame grabber or a > video lunchbox? I do not know if there were computer stop motion frame grabbers tools back in 1996-97.
This video copy on Youtube, the resolution not so good ... in those days, > old style TV video tape quality. Perhaps, the scenes could also have been intentionally photographed to have a soft swamp-like atmosphere which contributes to its hazy look. In addition, before you judge harshly, again ... wire armatures were used, and therefore full expression & fluidity of the animation perhaps limited (by the wires), however, I thought the feeling of massive size & sense of weight, looked reasonably good! In the overall documentary, the stop motion dino scenes are very few. Just a reminder, from the crew list, only 4 artists were responsible for the puppets, miniature sets, backgrounds, compositing & special effects!
Here are some of the stop motion only scenes from Beyond T-rex
Below, is the entire 1997 Beyond T-Rex documentary (52 minutes). Yes it's 27 years old but I thought it was still an entertaining & informative watch. Try to ignore the obnoxious large video water mark on lower right. The Youtuber who uploaded this documentary implying claim to it (?), but actually, copyright does not belong to him!
Let us not forget about the enigmatic & mysterious HALL TRAIN Studios! I
wonder if that is his real birth name? It sure does sound bad ass ... Lol! His
portfolio is bulging with past & present projects. Beyond T-Rex was one of Hall Train's earlier works using the stop motion animation
technique. Since then, I believe that he has not done any other stop motion projects. He currently does work for natural history & science museums, exhibits, theme mark, film, television, media.
My reference to the 1999 'Walking with Dinosaurs' was in regards to; that I believe it was one of the first dinosaur documentaries, where the creatures were fully created using CGI specifically for the television market. If you think about it, the movie, Jurassic Park was released in 1993 which was an important cinema milestone back then ... the first organic realistic creatures on the big screen that were computer generated (& animated). So 6 years later, the Discovery channel first introduced CGI dinosaurs which was perhaps, another milestone for television. Of course, today ... you have overflowing quantities of CGI dinosaur documentaries, with herds & herds of dinos dazzling you ad infinitum. They say bigger & more is supposedly better? 😉
UPDATE: Apparently, Hall Train Studio also did work on another dinosaur themed documentary which also included Stop Motion, The Ultimate Guide: T-Rex (1996). This is the full documentary. For the stop motion dino scenes, you will have to fast forward to find them. This video upload to Youtube is somewhat okay and the stop motion scenes have slightly improved resolution. > IMDb
You want MORE? I just found this ... ALL the Hall Train, Stop Motion scenes from both documentaries!
STOP MOTION WORKS 'Seal' - REAL Hand-Made Certified™ ( A.I.)
I did not know, there was this thing called 'Jurassic June' that was mentioned in a youtube video, where the voice-over was showing brief clips from an obscure B-movie called 'Dinosaur Babes' ....
I heard of Dinosaur Babes (released in 1996) many years ago and might have seen some still pictures. I knew Brett Piper was involved with the special effects, but also as the producer & writer. Just for your information ... to the best of my knowledge ... Brett is almost the only current practitioner of Ray Harryhausen style animation. Not just a hobby, but he fairly consistently works on & produces B-movie projects. Similar to Ray, Brett does almost all the effects, or oversees them, however one area of his expertise is, the hands-on animation which he solely does on his own ... stop motion creature character animation, especially still doing it, in these past years to present of CGI saturation.
Well ... this movie is on the interwebs. Here you go, 'Dinosaur Babes" (for mature audiences) The quality is not that good including the audio, but hey it's got stop motion!
Ray very briefly demonstrating rear projection and he is actually handling the puppet & posing it to the projected image. It's only about 2-1/2 minutes, watch ....
Of course, there have been publicity still photos of Ray with puppets and sometimes with a rear projection tabletop set-up ... but for me, I have never seen a video of him actually showing his method, posing the puppet, including the rear projection.
At the Youtube channel, you can read further details, below the player ... the description & notes.
A.I.)
