DD Biography – 2026
A teaser for ‘3 Inches a Second’
(B. 1958) HI. I am David Daniels. American dimensional animator and film director, technologist, visual inventor, and the artist best known for creating StrataCut—a topographical ‘shape over time’ clay animation technique that sculpts motion directly into layers of geometry before revealing cross sections back in stop motion, one thin slab or slice at a time.
It’s motion art designed as handmade geology. Moments in time get embedded along with other shapes that get covered in clay and cannot be seen. Until that is – the moment a perpendicular knife cuts it open to reveal each final vector.
In the early 1980’s, my CalArts mini-epic Buzz Box first expressed this signature style. The piece was an escalating 15 minutes of maximalist “insanimation” chaos. A Film made about video and TV, but watched on tape. It’s nice to see it currently being restored for real theatrical film release at 72 fps for the first time, and it will be added to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Archive.
Soon, my StrataCut and other clay stop motion work quickly became a part of the MTV 80’s with unforgettable openings and episodes for Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the opening and trippy parts of Peter Gabriel’s landmark Big Time music video.
I created the purple-faced reverse-singing J5 Strata for Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, then pushed out 30 feet of StrataCut in one single 2 minute take for Sesame Street. This beauty got banned for high dimensional rotations of time-sculpted numbers. Did StrataCut make one dyslexic?
1990 was my ‘metal tin can embedded in a strata cut clay brain’ for the TV show Idiot Box opening, and then 1992 bourght my full-throttle Strata-Punk and Grunge titles for the cult film Freaked! a “three minute primal psychomorphic scream!”
Since I needed to buy cameras, motion control and grip, I evolved into a widely versatile director for design and vfx working outside of StrataCut. Being true within more conventional styles, I always brought dimension, edge, density, color, and velocity of impact, along with beauty, joy and dark humor to all my work.
I had to become a gypsy platoon leader of other artistic people since I wanted to direct stuff. I evolved to pitch and sell work to clients, and be responsible to my people and for delivery on time. This broader journey also helped me become more versatile at all craft and design, with exposure to a wide group for shared knowledge.
In 1992, I joined Will Vinton in Portland, Oregon, helping to transform the studio from its claymation ‘Raisins’ legacy into a leader in motion control, mixed-media design, and the wider scope of dimensional production. I also brought my along Spanish-language representative, who was able to quickly land two years of wild and crazy FantaMan ‘jajajaja’ soda ads to immediately turn the creative ship, and really help Vinton’s bottom line.
With Chips Ahoy – ‘Swing, Swing Swing’ in late 1993, I rented my 3 Amiga Toasters to the production and created match moves on practical 3D motion control sets tracking state-of-the-old-art 3D CG computer character animation to all this.
The studio had lift-off! A year later, Vinton’s entire roster could suddenly bid on all kinds of work with a great variety of styles and much broader creative scope.
As animation director of the original CG M&M’s campaign in 1995 and 1996, I helped define the personalities and visual language of Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green—characters that have remained largely unchanged for more than three decades. I was the animation director for “They Do Exist!”— the most-watched commercial of all time, still running every season, three decades later.
After so many M&M’s, I was ready for several seasons of surreal Fox NFL puppet doll promos. Football bobble heads with wire puppet and foam mouths and face paddles. I would combine these 7 inch Terry Bradshaw like characters with live-action plates of Warren Sapp or Randy Moss slamming down slapstick gags.
In 1997, I cast actor Jeremy Renner (age 15) in his first screen appearance for Doritos Drummer. It reminds me of how put Annette Bening (age17) into her first screen appearance 20 years earlier starring in my Super 8 high school epic PHased,
My Halloween Clearasil ad had a live action grunge teen tormented by acne with fantasies illustrated with flowing StrataCut water and germs. A giant motor power guillotine was built to grind through these larger time sculptures I had now created.
In 2000, I used this same strata chopping contraption once again. My last job at the studio was a 600-pound, 7-foot-long Acid Trip StrataCut Sculpture for Gary and Mike – Phish Phry. Full of real Character-Strata moments, timing, beats and rotations.
I stopped time-sculpting for the next decade, as many people remarked my work looked like CG or computer graphics. This was crushing.
Standard Def TV’s did strata cut detail no favors, and the fuzziness of the capture at 720p and reproduction of 640p is part of these glib comments. (I later came back to strata when 4K made strata and stop mo visually worth it.)
As the dot-com burst cratered ad production, and TV budgets, Vinton’s became LAIKA and many other floors dropped out. So after 9-11, I stayed in town to co-found Bent Image Lab with Chel White and Ray Di Carlo and see if we three could jump start a new creative engine out of the recession.
We gathered a team of Portland artists, animators and talent who sustained themselves over decades by building a high-value independent creative production company around our shared skills in character animation, design, story, CG, live action, digital and practical visual effects, stop motion, comedy, experimental “edge-case” filmmaking, and efficient production. It was an amazing ride.
I got to direct visually innovative and award-winning work for Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Kellogg’s, Tropicana, Klondike, Apple Jacks, Tinactin with John Madden, Twistables, Tylenol, Always, and countless other international brands, earning honors including various AICP, Clio, Hugo, and Daytime Emmy Awards.
Festivals in Brazil and Chile in 2011 and 2012 sharing days of StrataCut Clips in classes and auditoriums with great interest in my work. It helped renew my interest in teaching. The crowds of Strata-Curious encouraged me forward.
I shot 100 single take youtube tutorials around this period. Long and short videos showing how I build in real time. This inspired a lot of learning of the craft by others through the internet, (which became apparent to me by 2022, with amazing work by Ellard DeVane and other Strata Cutters on Instagram. )
In 2014, I helped expand Bent’s focus beyond dimensional production into augmented reality, computer vision, spatial computing, along with AI-assisted training systems. I continue to explore the evolving relationship between dimensional motion art, and synthetic interactive technology for human perception and behavior.
Briefly, as a second life in real life continues to emerge, Future Digital AGI Society needs a shared Internet of Places (IoP) and Proof of Location (PoL) to expand a citizens ability for universal personal data sovereignty and a digital bill of spatial rights. In the meantime, building AI powered AR to re-train workers more quickly with high quality results, is the current near term enterprise market for this tech stack.
Since returning to my own Strata-Cut time sculpting in 2020, I have created 100’s of new ‘clay slab meat’ art pieces, and have some sold well in galleries. I taught “StrataGanza” workshops in LA, at CalArts and at Pratt in Brooklyn, inspiring a growing generation of younger time sculptors.
2023, I StrataCut a Portland Crow, and unreleased Bi Polar Pepe, and six shots of McDMTS or Nubby Nuggets on Acid.
During 2024 and 25, I made several unreleased podcast tutorials along with BTS. I shot light field cameras trying to get 4D StrataCut Gaussian motion splats, and completed recent new StrataCut insanimations for Uniqlo Four-Eyed SpongeBob, Smiling Friends, and Sarah Squirm’s In the Flesh.
Today, I finish up and store old slabs onto plex, and also create new thin strata sculptures. I also shoot more BTS, and sort out the history and philosophy of StrataCut while writing two books.
This short auto-bio is a teaser for my memoir, 3 Inches a Second, and its companion volume that explores “Time Blindness” and the therapy of long-term, ballistic “shape-over-time” thinking. Retiring soon, I am preparing to archive more than four decades of work, much of it not yet publicly surfaced.
Lastly, I am actively seeking a serious curator, institution, or collector to help preserve one of animation’s original, novel, and long lasting bodies of experimental motion art for future generations. Reach out by IG DM.