The George Pal Puppetoon Site
If only for his unforgettable feature films, such as The Time Machine,
War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, and tom thumb (to name
a few), George Pal will be remembered as one of the most gifted directors
of fantastic cinema in history. Ironically, this popularity as a feature-film director
usually overshadows Pal's great contributions to the field of stop-motion animation.
Pal's Puppetoons (he coined the word from a combination of "puppet"
and "cartoon") started as soft-sell advertising films in Europe.
These
short films were so much fun to watch that theaters soon billed them
in the lobby
and played them for free (that is, without the advertisers paying for
screen time).
Eventually, Pal and his wife (Zsoka) fled the horror of the Nazi invasion,
moved
to Hollywood, USA, and was able to make the Puppetoons without advertisements,
instead
being sponsored by Paramount Pictures.
These "toons" were made with beautifully-carved wooden puppets, usually
using Pal's invented "replacement technique", which involved a separate
puppet (or puppet part) for each motion, rather than hinged parts. A
single walking
sequence, for instance, could involve 12 pairs of legs for one character.
During
the peak of Puppetoons, an average feature would use 9,000 puppets. Crazy?
Maybe...
but the effect is spectacular, and it has many benefits in common with
computer animation
(such as changeable perspectives and unlimited re-use of a finished model)
which
is only gaining real strength almost 50 years later.
Within this site you will find (among other things) more information on Pal, a filmography,
lots of behind-the-scenes images and information, coverage of some exemplary Puppetoons
(including lots of images and over 12 megs of movies and sounds), and more... as
with the other main sections of Animation of Heaven & Hell in 3-D!, this
site will change and grow periodically, so stop back often!
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This George Pal sub-site of Animation of Heaven & Hell in 3-D! would not have been even a fragment of what you are about to see without the help of:
This page was first posted December 1, 1996, and closed on May 20, 2000.