Clay Figures Animate ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’

A tiny family of dinosaurs that lives in a mouse hole; a two-dimensional clay girl whose eyes are copper pennies; a block of clay that reveals moving pictures of historical events as it’s sliced: “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” CBS’s hit Saturday-morning program, has become a showcase for some of the most original animation on television today.

The animated segments comprise between 25% and 33% of each episode of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” which has been nominated for best children’s program in the Daytime Emmy Awards (2-4 p.m. today, Channels 2 and 8). The two-year-old comedy series already has received three Emmys--for set decoration, makeup and video tape editing--in non-televised ceremonies last weekend for technical categories. However, not one of the show’s 14 nominations this season was for animation.

“All of the animators won awards in the first season,” says Steve Binder, who serves as co-producer with Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman). “We couldn’t resubmit our opening titles--even though we changed them--nor could we enter the ‘Penny’ cartoons again. We entered anything and everything the Academy (of Television Arts & Sciences) would allow, and received nominations in every category we entered. But I’m unhappy that we weren’t able to obtain any recognition for the animators.”

The animators don’t appear upset by the lack of nominations: They speak enthusiastically about the freedom “Playhouse” offers to experiment with new styles and techniques. Although the show is carefully scripted, its structure allows them to invent pieces of business and embellish their scenes--subject to Reubens’ approval.

“I have my bad days, when I’m not so open to suggestions,” Reubens says with a characteristic laugh. “But I try to consider everyone’s input--provided it’s understood that I can say no. I won’t say no unreasonably, but I have to serve as the barometer and decide if something is too much or not going in the right direction for my show.”

“ ‘Pee-wee’ is the only chance anyone gets to do this kind of experimental work for a network audience,” says Dave Daniels, who invented the “Strata-Cut” animation used in the “History Lesson” sequences. “Most children’s animation has its form limited and you can’t expand beyond what’s already known. Here, we were given that chance and the economics were right: There was enough money to do it, but not enough to pay for a lot of backtracking and reshooting that would make things sterile.”

Daniels amazed viewers with his Strata-cut depictions of Columbus discovering America and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The figures seemed to move inside a block of brightly colored clay that resembled a multi-hued meat loaf.

To achieve this effect, he sculpts the figures in strips “like a long, contorted sushi roll,” then packs the background material around them. Daniels slices about 1/16th of an inch off the block, shoots a frame of film, then cuts off another slice: Each cut reveals the figures inside the block in a slightly different position. The results appear to move when the film is shown.

Daniels uses ordinary plasticine clay to form the blocks, which are about a foot long and six inches high. With their brightly swirled surfaces, the blocks look like chunks of taffy or Venetian glass. The slices are fragile and resemble pages from a small, crumbling book.

Oskar Fischinger used a similar slicing technique to make abstract films around 1919, but Daniels says he developed his system independently, inspired by the layers of a multicolored clay cake his sister made when they were children. In addition to his work for “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” he’s done animation for Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” video and an upcoming special for Michael Jackson. He’s also developing several personal films.

“Right now, I’m trying to get better at moving three-dimensional shapes in space,” he says. “But it’s always been a question of asking the medium what it wants to be. Rather than trying to make it conform to what I want it to look like, I try to discover its inherent characteristics--what it’s ‘saying’ to me.”

The popular “Penny” cartoons use more conventional clay animation to depict the fantasies of the various girls who provide her voice. Penny, a little clay girl with blonde braids and copper pennies for eyes, discusses things that interest or amuse her in rambling, unstructured monologues that reflect the way children really talk.

“As I’m the host of the show and I’m a boy, I wanted to do a regular feature for girls that would be partially feminist in scope,” Reubens says. “We came up with the idea of having real little girls talk, and then we edit and storyboard the results. I’m very pleased with that section because it’s totally a children’s piece: When Penny says things like ‘kids should have rights, too’ it comes directly from a child’s perspective.”

Many viewers assume the members of “The Dinosaur Family,” like Penny, are made of clay, but they’re not: “Their movements couldn’t be done with clay figures,” says Don Waller, who animates their antics. “When you get detailed figures like these with all their little scales and bumps, clay becomes too time-consuming to use--that’s why we chose rubber puppets.”

On the show, the dinosaurs appear to be a rambunctious group of tiny figures who live within the Playhouse walls in a mouse hole. The figure of “Dad” Dinosaur--an orange Triceratops in a gaudy sport shirt--that stands in Waller’s kitchen workroom is actually about a foot high. A look at the puppet makes it clear why Waller considers clay impractical: The warts and scales that cover Dad’s hide would have to be resculpted every time an animator touched him.

Instead, the figure was constructed like the stop-motion monsters in such science-fiction movies as “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”--by molding flexible rubber foam around a jointed steel skeleton. The metal armature supports the figure and holds it in place when animators adjust it.

“Usually the scripts will just have a line or two describing what Paul wants the dinosaurs to be doing--playing baseball, for example” Waller says. “Director Kevin Dole and I get up and act like the dinosaurs until we come up with enough ideas, then we make up story boards and submit them for Paul’s approval. Acting everything out makes it much easier to animate--I’d say all the dinosaur acting (that) people saw last season was basically me.”

Although the writers’ strike makes it impossible to say just what will be featured on the next season of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” Reubens and Binder plan to continue using the most distinctive animation they can find.

“We certainly want to be at the front of the pack and bring any new animation techniques that are emerging into the Playhouse,” Binder says. “For example, the idea of three-dimensional television has been kicked around for years. If we could find a way to give the children a legitimate three-dimensional feature, we’d certainly want to pursue it, and we’re talking to a lot of 3-D people now. We’ve learned that we can do short animated pieces and the audience will accept them: We don’t have to sacrifice quality for quantity.”