Bob Gardiner (animator)
James Robbins "Bob" Gardiner was an American artist, painter, cartoonist, animator, holographer, musician, storyteller, and comedy writer. He invented the stop-motion 3-D clay animation technique which his collaborator Will Vinton would later market as Claymation, although Bob preferred the term Sculptimation for his frame-by-frame method of sculpting plasticine clay characters and sets.
He and Vinton shared the 1974 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Closed Mondays. The film was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Gardiner committed suicide on April 21, 2005, while living at the Everhart Hotel in downtown Grass Valley.