Will Vinton (1947-2018)

Birthplace:
McMinnville, Oregon, USA

Born:
November 17, 1947

Died:
October 4, 2018

Award-winning co-director of "Closed Mondays", the first Claymation (tm) film.  Will Vinton was born on November 17, 1947 in McMinnville, Oregon, USA as William Gale Vinton. He was a producer and director, known for Claymation Easter (1992), Martin the Cobbler (1977) and Moonwalker (1988). He was married to Gillian Allred and Susan Shadburne. He was a Claymation artist who coined the term. His studio created numerous Claymation characters for ads, most notably the California Raisins, which gained fame in an ad set to the Motown hit "I Heard It Through the Grapevine".  He died on October 4, 2018 in Portland, Oregon.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Animation:
1974  Closed Mondays
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1987  The Festival of Claymation

Animation Director:
1974  Closed Mondays
1985  Return to Oz
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1987  The Festival of Claymation

Director:
1974  Closed Mondays
1974  Gone for a Better Deal
1976  Mountain Music
1977  Martin the Cobbler
1978  Claymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation
1978  Rip Van Winkle
1979  Legacy: A Very Short History of Natural Resources
1979  The Little Prince
1980  A Christmas Gift
1980  Dinosaur
1981  The Creation
1982  The Great Cognito
1985  Return to Oz
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1987  Claymation Christmas Celebration
1987  Dinosaurs: A Fun Filled Trip Back in Time
1987  The Festival of Claymation
1988  Moonwalker
1988  Speed Demon
1990  Raisins Sold Out: The California Raisins II
1994  The World's Greatest Animation
1997  The PJ's
2005  The Morning After

Executive Producer:
1974  Closed Mondays
1974  Gone for a Better Deal
1976  Mountain Music
1977  Martin the Cobbler
1978  Claymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation
1978  Rip Van Winkle
1979  Legacy: A Very Short History of Natural Resources
1979  The Little Prince
1980  A Christmas Gift
1980  Dinosaur
1981  The Creation
1982  The Great Cognito
1985  Return to Oz
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1987  Claymation Christmas Celebration
1987  Dinosaurs: A Fun Filled Trip Back in Time
1987  The Festival of Claymation
1988  Moonwalker
1988  Speed Demon
1990  Raisins Sold Out: The California Raisins II
1991  Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors
1992  Will Vinton's Claymation Easter
1994  Hammer Time
1994  The World's Greatest Animation
1997  The PJ's
2000  The Boyer Brothers
2002  Día de los muertos
2005  The Morning After
2006  The Wild

Producer:
1974  Closed Mondays
1974  Gone for a Better Deal
1976  Mountain Music
1977  Martin the Cobbler
1978  Claymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation
1978  Rip Van Winkle
1979  Legacy: A Very Short History of Natural Resources
1979  The Little Prince
1980  A Christmas Gift
1980  Dinosaur
1981  The Creation
1982  The Great Cognito
1985  Return to Oz
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1986  Shadow Play
1987  Claymation Christmas Celebration
1987  Dinosaurs: A Fun Filled Trip Back in Time
1987  The Festival of Claymation
1988  Meet the Raisins!
1988  Moonwalker
1988  Speed Demon
1990  Raisins Sold Out: The California Raisins II
1991  Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors
1992  Will Vinton's Claymation Easter
1994  Hammer Time
1994  Mr. Resistor
1994  The World's Greatest Animation
1997  Bride of Resistor
1997  The PJ's
1999  I Lost My M in Vegas
2000  The Boyer Brothers
2002  Día de los muertos
2005  The Morning After
2006  The Wild

Screenplay:
1974  Closed Mondays
1974  Gone for a Better Deal
1976  Mountain Music
1977  Martin the Cobbler
1978  Claymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation
1978  Rip Van Winkle
1979  Legacy: A Very Short History of Natural Resources
1979  The Little Prince
1980  A Christmas Gift
1980  Dinosaur
1981  The Creation
1982  The Great Cognito
1985  Return to Oz
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1986  Shadow Play
1987  Claymation Christmas Celebration
1987  Dinosaurs: A Fun Filled Trip Back in Time
1987  The Festival of Claymation
1988  Meet the Raisins!
1988  Moonwalker
1988  Speed Demon
1990  Raisins Sold Out: The California Raisins II
1991  Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors
1992  Will Vinton's Claymation Easter
1994  Hammer Time
1994  Mr. Resistor
1994  The World's Greatest Animation
1997  Bride of Resistor
1997  The PJ's
1999  I Lost My M in Vegas
2000  The Boyer Brothers
2002  Día de los muertos
2005  The Morning After
2006  The Wild

Story:
1974  Closed Mondays
1974  Gone for a Better Deal
1976  Mountain Music
1977  Martin the Cobbler
1978  Claymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation
1978  Rip Van Winkle
1979  Legacy: A Very Short History of Natural Resources
1979  The Little Prince
1980  A Christmas Gift
1980  Dinosaur
1981  The Creation
1982  The Great Cognito
1985  Return to Oz
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1986  Shadow Play
1987  Claymation Christmas Celebration
1987  Dinosaurs: A Fun Filled Trip Back in Time
1987  The Festival of Claymation
1988  Meet the Raisins!
1988  Moonwalker
1988  Speed Demon
1990  Raisins Sold Out: The California Raisins II
1991  Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors
1992  Will Vinton's Claymation Easter
1994  Hammer Time
1994  Mr. Resistor
1994  The World's Greatest Animation
1997  Bride of Resistor
1997  The PJ's
1999  I Lost My M in Vegas
2000  The Boyer Brothers
2002  Día de los muertos
2005  The Morning After
2006  The Wild

Writer:
1974  Closed Mondays
1974  Gone for a Better Deal
1976  Mountain Music
1977  Martin the Cobbler
1978  Claymation: Three Dimensional Clay Animation
1978  Rip Van Winkle
1979  Legacy: A Very Short History of Natural Resources
1979  The Little Prince
1980  A Christmas Gift
1980  Dinosaur
1981  The Creation
1982  The Great Cognito
1985  Return to Oz
1985  The Adventures of Mark Twain
1986  Shadow Play
1987  Claymation Christmas Celebration
1987  Dinosaurs: A Fun Filled Trip Back in Time
1987  The Festival of Claymation
1988  Meet the Raisins!
1988  Moonwalker
1988  Speed Demon
1990  Raisins Sold Out: The California Raisins II
1991  Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors
1992  Will Vinton's Claymation Easter
1994  Hammer Time
1994  Mr. Resistor
1994  The World's Greatest Animation
1997  Bride of Resistor
1997  The PJ's
1999  I Lost My M in Vegas
2000  The Boyer Brothers
2002  Día de los muertos
2005  The Morning After
2006  The Wild

Executive Producer:
1989  The California Raisin Show
1999  The PJs

Producer:
1989  The California Raisin Show
1999  The PJs
2001  Gary & Mike

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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

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Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

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  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

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Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.