Different Techniques - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 138

Cross-over techniques
Plenty of areas of animation cannot be dei ned as pure model animation, but combine
the textural pleasures of puppet work with the painterly and drawn feel of traditional two-
dimensional animation. The American artist Joan Gratz works with clay to combine her passions
of painting and animation. Her animated clay paintings, in such i lms as the Academy Award-
winning Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase , 1992, have the beauty and subtlety of paintings,
but their added texture, shadow and movement give them an extraordinary life and we see
the images with new eyes. It is this texture that draws so many of us to dimensional animation.
There may not be such an ini nite range of colours, or maybe there is, but you don't have to
worry about the paint drying or splashing, and the physical act of pushing the clay around
and blending must be hugely satisfying. The great sadness about such a work as Mona Lisa
Descending a Staircase is while every frame is a glorious work of art, the technique demands that
each image is altered or destroyed before the next frame. This is like moving a puppet forward
to the next frame. There is no way to go back, and the work is about getting the image onto i lm.
Once captured, the real craft is discarded. With drawn animation, the drawings exist long after
the i lm is completed. With Joan Gratz's i lms all that is left is some jumbled-up clay and some
guide images. With puppet i lms, all that is left is some decaying puppets. Maybe part of the
appeal is about a single, never to be repeated moment being captured on i lm.
Joan Gratz and some of the images for her clay-painted fi lm Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase
(and an award that nearly was …).
The puppets used in my i lms are rotting in the National Museum of Film,
Photography and Television . Their skin's drying out, becoming crunchy and showing
the mechanics underneath. Around their feet gathers a small amount of dust
that was once l esh. Their glass eyes still sparkle undimmed, but the rest is fading
away. At some expense, a new skin could be cast and repainted, but that would be