FEATURED PHOTO:

7 FACES OF DR. LAO, 1964 - This is what the stop motion Dr. Lao puppet looked like in 2009. The armature parts pictured are his two arms and his left leg that is attached to the hip joint. I had this puppet for many years and recently gave it back to Gene Warren Jr. esDr.Lao_v04 : This is what the stop motion Dr. Lao puppet looked like in 2009. The armature parts pictured are his two arms and left leg that is attached to the hip joint. I was in possession of this puppet for many years and it is now in the possession of Gene Warren Jr.

 
FE FEATURED PHOTO:
Piranha_v04L – 1978 : Phil Tippett animates the creature for the movie PIRANHA. Phil designed, sculpted and fabricated this marvelous beast over a Jon Berg armature made from bicycle chain. The set up was on Stage 6 at Cascade Pictures in Hollywood where Bill Hedge made and lit the process set up using his RKO process projector. To quote Phil - "This was my last L.A. stint." After this project Phil moved to the bay area for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. This stop motion puppet was later used for the first tests that went on to become "go-motion".
 
 
February 1971 – This was a test for a Volkswagon television commercial set up and animated by David Allen at Cascade Pictures in Hollywood. David also built the Kong stop motion model. Rear screen process projection was used for this test but for the actual job a photographic enlargement was employed. Fay Wray's daughter was hired to appear in the final commercial.
 
Last Week's Photo:
 
PHOTO OF THE WEEK : 6/06/05

Cascade_v001 : This is an advertisement that Cascade Pictures put together to show the
creative talent pool at Stage 6. Stage 6 was the home of the animation and visual effects division of Cascade Pictures of California. I think this photo was taken about 1975.
Standing to the right is Jim Danforth; lying down in front is Dennis Muren; sitting in the middle row from left to right are Bill Hedge, Laine Liska and Mike Minor; back row left to right are David Allen, Ken Ralston, Tom Scherman, Harry Walton and David Stipes.
Cascade was an amazing place to work at the time, it was the largest commercial production studio in the world. It was like a miniature MGM studios in that it was fully self sufficient. It had these departments : casting, editorial, post production, optical department, cell animation department, sound recording, live action sound stages, stop motion and effects department, machine shop, prop shop, set construction and more. If you wanted to, you could learn all phases of motion picture production at this company.

 
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