David Bowes wants to make one thing clear – he’s not anti-cgi. Bowes, the president and senior creative director at Vancouver stop-motion/claymation studio Bowes Productions, believes puppets and models can co-exist quite nicely with digital creations.

‘I’m not against [3D animation] at all,’ he says.

In certain cases, he explains, photographing a real object is just the preferable way to go. He cites the example of Voyage of the Unicorn, a tv miniseries his company recently worked on for producer Sextant Entertainment and Hallmark Entertainment, slated to air on Odyssey in the u.s. this month. The movie tells the fantastic tale of a modern-day family, led by Professor Aisling (Beau Bridges), that is sent to a mystical world to combat an evil troll named Skotos.

bp created a dream sequence in which Miranda Aisling (actress Heather McEwen) dances on a stage and confronts a serpent, realized in stop-motion animation. A bronze Mermaid rises from the waves and tries to cast a musical spell on the viper.

‘When we arrived, director Philip Spink said, ‘We have so much cgi on this show, I want something different, something that’s really going to stand out,’ ‘ Bowes recalls.

Bowes can point to stellar work in both disciplines.

‘Everything definitely has a place right now,’ he says. ‘Look at [the 3D-animated] Toy Story – that in itself is its own entity. The same can be said for [the stop-motion] The Nightmare Before Christmas. It always boils down to that it has to be a good idea. You can have the most spectacular looking animation, but if the idea is not there, it’s not going to fly.’

bp recently celebrated its 12th anniversary. Bowes says a big reason for his company’s longevity has been keeping its full-time staff down to its principals – himself, business associate/production manager/producer Jim Pescitelli, and veteran cinematographer Bob Ennis – while maintaining a strong network of freelancers to call upon as projects dictate.

‘I’ve got the pick of the litter,’ Bowes says. ‘When people come and work with us – and I stress this to other studios – treat your workers really well, pay them right, respect them as artists, and it works out fine. These people keep coming back to us.’

One of bp’s chief freelancers iskey stop motion animator Jeff Mulcaster, who frequently collaborates with renowned cgi/stop-motion shop Will Vinton Studios, out of Portland, Oregon. Ennis, bp’s regular dop, has worked on an array of projects including Jumanji, and is a big selling point for the company.

‘I send out his resume every time we do a bid on a job, and as soon as people see his cv, they can’t help but be affected, because it’s nothing short of excellent,’ Bowes says.

According to Bowes, many of the jobs his company works on require six or seven pairs of hands. He believes the practice of Vancouver studios hiring as the workload demands has been unfairly treated in the press.

‘One of the studios here was working on a major project – I think they had 200 people,’ he recounts. ‘And when the job was finished, the papers lambasted [the studio] in the sense of ‘Oh, they’re laying everybody off,’ and that was not the case. Anybody who knows the industry knows the gig was over, and [the artists] knew from the beginning that when it was finished they would have to look for another job, unless the studio brought in another contract.’

Crossing the moat

bp began in Victoria, and although Bowes enjoyed living there, he soon found it ‘a glass castle surrounded by a moat, because nobody really comes to you.’ The fledgling company invested a lot of time making phone calls and attending film festivals in order to extend its business connections. As a result it landed contracts including one with Japan’s Fuji Television Corporation for the children’s program Hirake Ponkiki. The shop produced claymation shorts for the Sesame Street-style show.

This initial success convinced Bowes he could secure more long- and short-format gigs by relocating to the production centre on the mainland.

‘When the advertising agencies want you, they want you now, and they’re not going to get on a heli-jet, so we moved the whole company to Vancouver,’ he says.

The Vancouver operation consists of a small office, and when a job comes in, it rents a 1,000- to 5,000-square-foot studio. When a project’s done, the camera equipment and other gear go into storage.

One of bp’s landmark projects was Twisteeria, a half-hour stop-motion animation/live-action special for ytv, which won a 1999 Leo Award for best animated program and was nominated for four Geminis. The one-off features 32 foam rubber latex characters, more than 50 miniature sets, and outrageous creations including restaurant-critiquing, moped-riding sharks, singing gargoyles, and more of those terrible trolls. Twisteeria established the shop as capable of delivering high-quality, full-length programming.

bp has since redone its demo reel to balance Twisteeria highlights with commercial work such as ‘The Big Cheese Event,’ a McDonald’s spot starring a cheeseburger-loving mouse. Bowes reports the breakdown of commercial and long-form work is now 50-50.

Twisteeria led to the feature gig Snow Day, the Paramount Pictures/ Nickelodeon Movies comedy starring Chevy Chase. bp animated a two-minute sequence in which a group of plastic action figures led by Meltar gives a pep talk to a young girl played by Zena Grey.

‘I remember sitting on location in Calgary with Chris Koch, the director, and he said, ‘The reason we hired you guys is that your tape is on the dark side and we really liked what we were looking at,’ ‘ Bowes recollects.

Bowes confirms the perception that stop motion is very time-consuming, although he believes its production time is often on par with cgi. He does acknowledge, however, that it’s a more risky craft.

‘When we shoot, we have to ‘shoot to kill’ because basically you’re moving an object and there’s nothing recording it to back it up,’ he explains. ‘But cgi is like classical animation – if you screw up you still have all the elements in the computer.’

Bowes says that at one frame at a time a single shot can take up to 18 hours to achieve, but the finished product is worth the time investment.

‘Stop-motion is very different, even compared to live action,’ he adds. ‘I think everybody’s always fascinated by how we take a real object that sits on a table and bring that thing to life.’ *

-www.bowesproductions.com