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At I-CON, Voltaire Talks Stop Motion Animation

Musician shares stories from his other career.

Macabre musician Voltaire has been performing to packed rooms at I-CON for a number of years, but some repeat con-goers may not have known that in addition to writing and performing satirical songs about goth culture, "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," he is a professor of stop motion animation at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Saturday afternoon at the 31st annual I-CON, Voltaire gave a presentation to a standing room only crowd on how he got into the business of stop motion animation at a young age and continues to work in it today. The presentation had the same humor that makes his musical performances at I-CON so popular.

Voltaire said that, as he tells his SVA students about making stop-motion animations, “It’s not only tedious — but it’s boring!”

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Now 45, he has been making stop motion films since he was 10 years old. At 17, he was encouraged to try to turn his hobby into a career, and he approached the studio that at the time was animating for "Pee Wee's Playhouse." Having no idea what pay rate to ask for, he jumped at an offer of $100 per day, he said, having only been making $99 a week at Tower Records. But after meeting other animators, he found that even $100 a day was well below the typical starting rate for stop motion animators. He demanded more money, and was soon making $3,000 a week as a 17-year-old, he said, adding, "Don't let this happen to you."

"I would literally get my check and spend it the same day," Voltaire said.

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He made commercials for everything from toys to beer, including beer bottles playing football, but said he really enjoyed the work he got around Halloween — making monsters.

When MTV came to the studio asking for dark and weird station IDs, "the president of the company said, 'Man, do I have the guy for you,'" Voltaire recalled. He won three awards on his first directing job and the MTV station IDs he made were put into a time capsule and shot into space, he said. He admitted it went to his head.

He's come down to earth since then. He showed the audience his reel — samplings of his best work in stop motion — including some of his earliest work from the late '80s up to short films he made in 2011. Through various friends and acquaintances, he has gotten many celebrities to agree to narrate his shorts, including Debbie Harry of Blondie, composer Danny Elfman, musician Gary Numan and actor Gerard Butler.

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