Bob_Gardiner_(animator)
Bob Gardiner (animator)
American artist, filmmaker, and multimedia creator (1951-2005)
James Robbins "Bob" Gardiner (March 19, 1951 – April 21, 2005) was an American artist, painter, cartoonist, animator, holographer, musician, storyteller, and comedy writer.[1][2] He invented the stop-motion 3-D clay animation technique which his collaborator Will Vinton would later market as Claymation, although Bob preferred the term Sculptimation for his frame-by-frame method of sculpting plasticine clay characters and sets.
He and Vinton shared the 1974 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Closed Mondays.[3] The film was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.[4]
Gardiner committed suicide on April 21, 2005, while living at the Everhart Hotel in downtown Grass Valley.[5]