Eli Noyes, a pioneering stop-motion animator who received an Academy Award nomination for his short film Clay, or the Origin of Species He worked on an MTV series Liquid TV And HBO mind games Among other credits, Matt. He was 81 years old.
His death was announced by Ralph Guggenheim, Noyes’ partner at Alligator Planet for more than 20 years. No further details available.
Noyce specialized in stop motion using clay and sand, and an early student film earned him an Academy Award nomination. Clay, or the Origin of Species It was an innovative and primitive black-and-white short film tracing the emergence of life on Earth from its earliest existence. Watch it above.
His next film was the alphabet, This time, sand manipulation was used as a method. It won the Special Jury Prize at the 1967 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, and was used for decades to illustrate the ABCs on PBS. Sesame Street.
Noyes continued the shortcut with clay and sand, using the latter for Sandman (1973) and the dotted stop motion of Peanut Butter (1976). This short would air years later on Nickelodeon, of which Noyes was an early contributor.
He and Kate Laybourne founded Noyes & Laybourne Enterprises in 1983, and that year Noyes directed and produced the pilot for mind games, a mid-1980s HBO series created by Sheila Nevins that won the 1983 CableACE Award for Single Program – Innovative Genre Programming. The duo later created a pair of shows for Nickelodeon: Eureka Castle And Jeolla Jeolla Island.
Noyes and Laybourne founded Colossal Pictures in 1988, and the duo has helped it develop liquid tv, MTV’s unforgettable animated series that aired from 1991 to 1994 and introduced the world to Mike Judge Beavis and Butt-Head And Peter Chung Ion Flux. The first season was also broadcast on BBC Two in the United Kingdom.
Colossal Pictures has also created commercials for major brands such as ABC Television, HBO, Xerox, and IBM.
Based in Northern California, Noyce later worked on projects for Pixar and Disney on shows for Disney’s Zoog, an animated blockbuster that aired on the Disney Channel from 1998 to 2002. He also served as director of interactive design at the Oxygen Television Network from 1999 to 2001.
The following year, he teamed up with Guggenheim to release Alligator Planet, where they would create cartoons for the rest of Noyes’ life. They have created film, print and media projects including short films and animated clips for documentaries including the Oscar-nominated The most dangerous man in America (2003).
He is survived by his wife, Augusta Talbot; Son Isaac, daughter Abigail and granddaughter Esme.