Stop motion animation has been a staple in holiday television specials for as long as they’ve been around. Some of the most popular specials include The Little Drummer Boy (1968), Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970), and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974). Each of these holiday specials were produced by Rankin/Bass, a production company formerly located in New York City. Rankin/Bass was founded by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass in 1960 and closed in 1987 as a result of TV show failures. The most popular Rankin/Bass television special is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer originally came from a poem written by Robert Lewis May in 1939. The story was first adapted to animation in 1948, and in 1949, the iconic song was written by Johnny Marks. The animated special was reissued in 1951 with the song added. When the Rankin/Bass version aired in 1964, it became so popular that it has been rebroadcast every year since, making it the longest running holiday special in history.
Like most Rankin/Bass films, all concepts, voice acting, and storyboards for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came from America and Canada while the stop motion animation was done in Japan using a technique called Animagic. While on a tour of Japanese animation studios in 1959, Rankin met Tadahito Mochinaga, who went on to lead the animation team for the TV special. Mochinaga’s career began with making propaganda films during WWII where he created literal puppets representing world leaders being controlled. While working on these films, Mochinaga developed Animagic, the stop motion animation technique later used to create Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This technique makes Rankin/Bass films so recognizable and creates characters with real personalities.
Production budget for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was $500,000, roughly $4.8 million today. For the stop motion animation, over 200 puppets were created and each character had multiple puppets so animators could work on scenes with the same character simultaneously. Production took over 18 months to complete and working hours were so long animators often slept in the studio. Along with the handcrafted puppets, 22 handmade sets were created. Lead puppet designer Ichiro Komura said, “Our puppet-making team and set & prop team were the first to start production a few months ahead of shooting.” Animator Hiroshi Tabata remembers the staff spent two days visiting Nara park to observe deer and, “build up our imagination of Rudolph and the reindeer’s world in the bosom of nature.” The work and care Mochinaga and his team put in to make this TV special paid off. For many, the holiday season isn’t the same unless they’ve watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
