 After that and some other small jobs, I did work for Danger
 Production's & ABC
television's Bump in the Night Saturday morning weekly show created
by Danger's two principal's, David Bleiman & Ken Pontac. Although
Bump was categorized by the "powers that be" as a "childrens show",
I always thought it was for an older or adult audience. It kind of had that
Rocky & Bullwinkle humor. I assisted Danger's main armature shop
with additional animation armatures, spare armature parts & components.
The show was a successful hit on American TV; however, this was when the
Disney Corporation bought ABC television, and then abruptly cancelled
Bump in spite of the good ratings.
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 Some more
miscellaneous jobs and then, a direct-to-video  B-movie, called Galaxis,
starring that statuesque blonde, Brigitte Nielson! I designed &
fabricated a Cyborg robot armature-finished Stop Motion puppet. They had a
full size cable operated cyborg for the close-up shots but it did not have
any legs (only to the hips), and they needed wide scenes showing the full
body cyborg walking, and so Stop Motion was used; everything was extremely
rushed. The producers gave me photos of the cyborg (leg-less) and I made a
miniature Stop Mo version of it, using my own leg design. It took a
very short 2 weeks of intense work to construct this somewhat,
extensively machined armature / puppet. Unfortunately, I did not have time to
photograph it but you can somewhat see what the cyborg looked like; it is
standing behind Brigitte Nielson! The veteran & master stop motion
animator, Pete Kleinow, animated the quick scenes of the Cyborg puppet.
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 Tippett Studios was preparing to go into full production on Starship
Troopers; they contacted me and wanted me to convert these resin model
maquette bugs by adding ball & sockets at every articulation point, so
that Phil could do test poses for storyboarding & visualiza tion purposes. Again, these
poseable bug maquettes were not used for animation. Phil gave me the coolest
assignment; to make a fully animateable, complex armature, of the giant
battle insect named Warrior. The
armature was not covered with any rubber skin; it looked like
a robotic silver colored
version of the "Warrior" bug and it also,was not used in the finished movie.
It was used for test animation and tactile hands-on visualization posing of
the Warrior bugs. In
addition, this armature used as a tool to
audition & test potential stop motion animators who would later be using
his studio's innovative D.I.D's (Digital Input Device), which inputs the
animation via stop motion. You can see images of the robotic looking
Warrior fully jointed armature for
posing & animatics testing, in the Gallery link above. Also here and here.
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 Well after that, it was kind of slow....wandering around.... some
occasional small jobs. I then got some work doing some complicated human
armatures for super hero-like puppet characters. The master sculptor &
character designer, Tony McVey & his company Menagerie Productions, was
assigned the project for Atari-Time Warner's Interactive video game called
Primal Rage 2. These were highly engineered & machined human
armatures, jointed right down to the fingers . In
hindsight, perhaps this was a bit much for a video game. I think simpler
armatures under the foam rubber would possibly have worked just as good.
Other than the popular, The Neverhood, I do not know if Stop Motion
is used much for interactive games anymore. Stop motion animators, Pete
Kleinow & Jon Berg did the animation. By the way, do not forget to go to
the Link page & "click" on Menagerie Productions web site; you
will see Tony's amazing display of his artistry & incredible looking
model figure kits & busts.
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 Thinking that the work I was doing, was starting to die, I suddenly
got a call from Randal M. Dutra at Industrial Light & Magic. They were
working on The Lost World ! Randy w as Phil Tippett's right hand man for many
years. Phil was not involved with the Jurassic sequel, however Randy, (who
worked on Jurassic) remembered me & also decided to go with
"poseable puppets" of the main dinosaur characters in Lost World, to
be used as a visual aid when Randy communicated with the ILM animators. Randy
was the animation supervisor on Lost World. In addition to his great
talent as a realist-type stop motion animator (in the Harryhausen
tradition!), he is a very accomplished wildlife nature artist and
sculptor.
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There was a a re-birth of
Davey & Goliath for new
audiences in 2002 that included some spots for the Lutheran Church and a
special, Davey & Goliath's Snowboard Christmas. Read
this article. I did some
work on that creating armatures for some of characters including a some for
a bear character. It was all done with good ol' Classic Stop
Motion done in a very finessed and clean animation style. Stop
Motion Animator Anthony Scott and veteran Peter Kleinow did the animation.
Joe Clokey is now the head chief at Premavision
Studio while his Dad, Art
Clokey is kind of relaxing and enjoying a bit of
retirement.
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