Toronto stop-motion animation company Quack Quack Animation has been freelancing for other production houses since 1994, but Quack Quack animator/director Philip Marcus says the time has come for the shop to take on commercial and long-form projects on its own.

Marcus, who has worked in stop-motion professionally for 15 years, acknowledges that while there may be few competitors in the stop-motion medium, there are also few stop-motion or claymation spots being produced. This doesn’t seem to faze him, however.

‘On the commercial front, it has never been something that is happening all of the time,’ says Marcus. ‘It has been a little sporadic. It becomes a really special thing to do, and the ones I have done have run for a very long time. It has been pretty slow lately [on the commercial side], but I don’t think that is purely in the stop-motion field.’

He says the challenges in doing stop-motion commercials are the same as they would be for spots done in live action, traditional animation or CG.

‘Commercials are a very specific thing, where you are looking to put across a really full idea in a short amount of time,’ says Marcus. ‘People are going to have to see them over and over again, so you don’t want anybody to get bored.’

Some of Marcus’ commercial work is among the most recognizable from the past decade in Canada. He has worked on spots for AGF (featuring Gumby and Pokey), Dunkaroos, Fruit Rollups, Lunchables, Clarica and others. Many of these jobs were acquired through other shops, such as Montreal’s Pascal Blais Productions (Lunchables, on which he served solely as animator) and Toronto’s The Animation House (AGF).

Marcus takes pride particularly in Gumby and Pokey (‘eventually, everybody retires’), which he worked on with The Animation House’s Bob Fortier. Together they mapped out the spot, heeding the agency’s requirements and specifications, but still managed to add a bit of creative as well.

‘There was a long shot of the beach, and we put in other little bits, like flamingos, which weren’t in the original boards. We thought the flamingos would be a nice play in the scene, like a nice tropical beach,’ says Marcus. ‘We put those in to spice it up, so it wouldn’t be just [Gumby and Pokey] and the background.’

Marcus says that after 15 years he still enjoys and finds satisfaction in his work. He says advancements in stop-motion and production technology – and the notion of mixing media – have kept it fresh for him.

‘I think [technology] has opened up a lot, especially with being able to post things in a computer,’ says Marcus. ‘You can do a whole lot of things now that you couldn’t do 15 years ago. The clay is still the same. It’s still the same very understandable process. You can get things to fly, which used to be a really big deal, but is now really simple to do. I think the computers bring something more to it.’

He admits, however, that he still enjoys the purity of stop-motion and the idea of being able to compose an entire scene inside the camera, using only clay, lights and skill. He says that in a time where a lot of people see animation beginning and ending at a computer terminal, he is happy to see a talented crop of young people interested in the old-school purity of stop-motion.

‘It’s not a huge talent pool, but there are very talented people out there,’ says Marcus. ‘I guess now that I know who the people are, it’s easier to find them. There is a lot of opportunity to get into other things; the young people bring a whole other [energy] to it.’

Marcus also says one of the biggest misconceptions of stop-motion is how long it takes to complete a project. He says he can finish shooting a stop-motion commercial in two to five weeks.

‘It’s a nicer pace when shooting,’ he explains. ‘I have worked on stuff that was longer, where there were two animators shooting for eight weeks, but that was a really high-end kind of commercial [the Lunchables spot]. That was a very specific job that demanded that kind of time, but it definitely doesn’t have to be that way.’ *

-www.quackquackanimation.com