Bruce Bickford

Bruce Bickford(February 11, 1947 - April 28, 2019) was a maker of animated films who works primarily inclay animation. From 1974 to 1980 he collaborated withFrank Zappa. Bickford's animation was featured extensively in the Frank Zappa videosBaby SnakesandDub Room Special. Zappa also released a video titledThe Amazing Mr. Bickford, which was entirely composed of Bickford animations set to a soundtrack of Zappa's orchestral music.Bickford's animations depict surreal scenes based on his unique worldview. Often outwardly seeming to be somewhat disconnected from the world around him, Bruce Bickford's work is extremely subjective in its content and concepts, making for some disturbing and shocking imagery. Much of his video work depicted fast-moving, fluid-like transformations of human figures and disfigured faces into odd beasts on surreal structural settings with impressive camera effects (moving around within his stop-motion animation).His life and work were featured in the 2004 biographical documentary filmMonster Road, directed byBrett Ingram, which has won numerous film festival awards and garnered acclaim in many countries.He is currently working onBoar's Head/Whore's Bed(line animation, 4500+ frames and counting),Tales of the Green RiverandCastle 2001, afeature-lengthfilm which is animated using 3D shapes made out of bits of paper.A new DVD was released by Bright Eye Pictures in early 2008, titledPrometheus' Garden. It includes the first film that Bickford had complete control over, the 28-minutePrometheus' Garden, originally completed on 16mm film in 1988. The DVD also includesLuck of a Foghorn, a new 30-minute documentary about Bickford by the director ofMonster Road.Mr. Bickford was the first ever guest to appear on the internet radio show Pussyfoot.