RIP Will Vinton

His name may ring a bell at first but let me fill you in on why. Will is the guy who “invented” Claymation, aka Animation via clay. He wasn’t necessarily the first person to use stop-motion techniques with clay-based objects, he was just the most successful starting with his Oscar®-winning short “Closed Mondays.”

Will’s most famous work though is the California Raisins commercials. Thanks to him, sales improved dramatically. I would have to agree. When I was a kid in the Seventies, having raisins in your lunch resulted on being made fun of. The Raisin stuff did get out of hand when they were given their own Christmas special and an album.

Other Claymation works you may recognize were a video for John Fogerty, Domino Pizza’s Noid creature and finally The PJs which was a short-lived sitcom on Fox.

Will did move on to CGI for the M&M commercials we see today with Billy West as the voice of the bossy red M&M.

Thanks for all you did Will. You did so much I didn’t list that I enjoyed and pushed the limits of stop-motion techniques we see now in Laika productions.

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