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Why did George Pal create thousands of model figures for the Puppetoons series?
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Animation
Scene from the 2024 science fiction animated film The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders.
George Pal created thousands of model figures for his Puppetoons series because he was a dedicated craftsman who utilized stop-motion animation techniques to achieve fluid movement in his films.1
Rather than using a single puppet with adjustable joints, Pal often employed a technique involving a vast number of individual replacement models for a single character. By creating up to 9,000 distinct figures for a single production—such as his 1942 anti-Nazi allegory Tulips Shall Grow—he could capture subtle changes in expression and motion frame by frame, resulting in the highly accomplished and popular animation style for which he became famous.1