TECHNIQUES & DEVELOPMENT OF STOP MOTION ANIMATION.

‘His work inspired Star Wars’

Born in Los Angeles in 1920 Passion for creation began in 1933 when he saw KING KONG. This film experience inspired Harryhausen’s first stop- motion animated home movies. He turned his DIY tools into joints for his models. His creativity gave his films a fresh and unique look. “It is a lonely profession, at least it was when I worked on my pictures”

Legendary stop-motion effects artist creating the amazing visuals on CLASH OF THE TITANS and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. Influencing to a number of fantasy and sci-fi filmmakers. George Lucas: “without the visual effects artists influence on filmmaking there ‘would have been no Star Wars” John Landis called Harryhausen’s work on The 7 th Voyage of Sinbad “the reason I’m a filmmaker” (2011 – The Wire) “Ray was a great artist with an incredibly influential body of work, a true gentleman and a good friend” - Landis

He was 83 years old when we was on tour. Giving lectures and signing one of his previous books called ‘Ray Harryhausen animated life’. Modern day animators have put in hidden tributes to him in their films. The old master said he was impressed in how far special effects have come, but he also thinks something had been lost. “ For today they don’t have time to develop the story, you have to have an explosion every 5 minutes” THE MATRIX – “I couldn’t follow what it was about. It had beautiful special effects, magnificent. But it didn’t communicate, I felt” – Harryhausen

“I found out about stop motion animation which was kept very secretive at that time” With a 16mm camera and a puppet fashioned from his mother’s fur coat, young Harryhausen set to work on his first animated film, which he entitled ‘The Cave Bear’

Harryhausenwas curious on how King Kong seemed to be ‘alive’. He then discovered from reading articles whilst trying to find out, about something called stop-motion animation. He was inspired from an exhibition at the LA County Museum on techniques, which had techniques used to make The Lost World and King Kong. This allowed Harryhausen to fit everything together.

War was declared and in , Ray created and photographed a short film called ‘How to Bridge a Gorge’. Roy was assigned to the Army in He was sent to For MacArthur for training. After entering the army, Harryhausen showed one of the teachers his short film. This was then directly shown to the film directors Frank Capra and Anatole Livtak.

Roy Harryhausen ‘retired’ from dimensional animation in ‘It is fine material but it rots’ – This refers to flesh and his models. Crowning achievement occurred in Died at aged 92. “Harryhausen created the face of fantasy cinema as we know it – or knew it from the 1950s to the start of the 1980s.” Nigel Andrews, Financial Times.

Emily Smith. Media TV & FILM