This film won third prize in the 1967 Kodak Teenage Movie Awards, senior division. An edited version was shown nationally on NBC. It was the last stop-motion film I made. The transfer to video tape from the original 8mm was done about 25 years ago, and the tape has deteriorated a bit. I did my best to improve the image quality, and I think I did a good enough job to let the story come through, but yes it is a bit hard on the eyes.

The story is a combination of Metamorphosis and The Incredible Shrinking Man. The film was originally silent. Emphasizing the teenage angst and Freudian overtones, I composed music and foleyed sound effects for this release to the web. There is one sound effect I didn’t create, you alert film buffs will recognize it.

The figure was an action figure called “Captain Action.” His extremely muscular plastic body was carved down to allow a more lifelike range of motion. I sculpted a head to resemble the actor, my patient friend, Tom Newman, but Tom looked enough like GI Joe, for me to use that toy’s head instead. The hands were made of wire and masking tape. My aunt Mary, an expert seamstress, sewed his shirt and pants.

The figure was held upright mostly from the use of sticky wax on the feet. At other times it was held in off balance positions by black threads from above. At other times glass microscope slides, placed carefully to avoid reflections helped to keep the figure in position.

I did the stop-motion animation on this ambitious little short in 1962 or 1963. It is, of course, inspired by the H.G. Wells novel and the George Pal movie. But my traveler goes back in time, not forward, and is not quite as philosophically oriented as Well’s traveler.

I always wanted my animated films to have a sound tracks. Now this one does. I had fun writing the dialogue to make some sense of the existing action. The music was composed on an ancient Casio CTK-150 keyboard.