Tina le Moine taught herself how to animate before entering art school. From there, she drifted into clay animation. And though le Moine's been successful in filmmaking, she still prefers animation.
"My favorite is still animation, moving around little personalities instead of real actors. I wrote the story for The Big Tuna, a clay animation film, using the same lighting and dialog as a real film noir, only the actors are puppets," she says.
"I built my sets and had all the puppets ready before applying for a grant. Now I'm working on a way to combine the puppets with the computer. Computers are great, but nothing can replace a self-created puppet character."
Le Moine, an independent 3D animator, would like to make a career out of clay animation. But she says it's difficult. "No one pays for clay animation anymore. The only way to get a clay animation film done is through grants," she says.
"Try it first, then go to school later for the technical part of filmmaking, not the other way around. It spoils creativity. Nobody should go to a school and expect to learn how to be creative."
Michael Frierson is a professor of broadcast and cinema at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. He feels prospects for clay animation artists are good.
"Many people do make money at it, but the size of the industry is very small. Clay animation tends to be done in places other than Hollywood, like Portland, Oregon, or New York."
The independent short film market is a tough market to make a living in. Television is structured in 30-minute segments, so there's no room for 10-minute clay animated films.
"Most people who make a living at it make commercials, which can be very lucrative if you're working at the top of your field," says Frierson.
Students considering this career should head into a media studies program where they learn filmmaking. "Get in the best film or animation program that you can get into," says Frierson.
"You want to come out of college with a portfolio of material. I'd also suggest students not narrow it to clay animation specifically. You shouldn't pigeonhole yourself as a clay animator. You should just become an animator. That's a lot broader."
Since we're in the age of the computer, is clay animation computer-generated? "There's nothing computer-generated about clay in its simplest form. But animation is becoming more computer-based -- like everything is," says Frierson.
"Clay tends to be a technique within the palette of animation that is converted at the computer and becomes whatever layered image you want it to be. Often, animators will cut out the foreground action in a computer and super it over anything they choose.
"So it becomes more computer-based. Nowadays, most complex images are composited in a computer anyway," he says.
Eric Mckenzie is a computer programmer and clay animation artist. He provides a different angle to clay animation by using a digital camera connected to his computer.
"Making clay animation is easy. The software that comes with the digital camera includes the ability to make a movie taking a frame at a time. All you need to do is to move the clay between each frame and then press the space bar to take the picture."
The images are stored on Mckenzie's computer hard drive. "Then I use a video editor to edit the movie and take out all the messed-up frames, then compress it so you can download it over the Internet. If I didn't compress it, it would take 10 hours to download instead of 10 minutes!"