Claymation: Making Movie History with Mud & Magic

I wrote this article in 1980, while serving as production manager and publicist for Will Vinton Productions. CineMagic was a periodical founded by filmmaker (and all-around nice guy) Don Dohler and geared toward budding filmmakers interested in creating their own special effects. The impetus for the article was unabashedly promotional; we had just released The Little Prince and Friends in theaters and wanted to sell enough tickets on the film's opening weekend to get a mention in Variety (mission accomplished!). While we billed the movie as the world's first Claymation feature film, in reality it was a compilation of three short films—Rip Van Winkle, Claymation, and The Little Prince—tied together with introductions and commentary by a clay-animated "Alistair Cookie."

My writing here is embarrassingly amateurish and the editing a bit sloppy (typos and inaccuracies), but I'm going ahead and publishing it here anyway for, um, posterity. My sincere apologies to anyone I might offend in the process...