Chris Dainty is a longtime member and former vice president of the Canadian Ice Carvers Society, Dainty creates large-scale ice sculptures for Ottawa’s annual Winterlude Festival, and in recent years he’s been experimenting with ways to bring ice into the world of animated film.
With Shannon Amen he combined 2D animation with a technique of his own invention that he’s dubbed ‘icemation,’ using stop motion and puppetry to animate large-scale human figures and objects carved in ice.
Using equipment located on the premises of the Ice Carvers Society, Dainty and his team harvest large blocks of crystal clear ice, transporting them to a freezer room where they employ chainsaws to sculpt life-size figures, using hand chisels to add finer detail. Ice sculptures can then be transported by freezer truck to filming locations.
