This inspired him to start making dioramas and miniature models. The exhibit allowed Ray to find out for himself how the magic of stop motion animation was really done. At about the same time, the LA County Museum had an exhibit on the films The Lost World and King Kong. But there was very useful information in a few of the articles. Some of the information was wrong but he could easily figure this out. He did some research into how King Kong was made and found articles about the method of stop motion animation in a few magazines. He would give performances for his friends and school mates using his marionettes, but was never satisfied with just puppets on strings because it wasn’t close enough to what he had witnessed in the theater. Ray Harryhausen was so influenced by King Kong that he made marionettes of Kong and the dinosaurs in the movie.
But in those days there was almost no information about O’Brien’s stop motion technique. He was very curious as to how the magic he had seen on the silver screen was actually done.
The magic of special effects artist Willis O’Brien’s King Kong would forever change the direction of the young Harryhausen. In 1933, Ray was taken to see the original King Kong at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California. There he would gaze upon the old bones of creatures from the distant past and imagine them in real life. His parents would help him exercise his imagination by feeding his interest in dinosaurs, taking him to the Los Angeles County Museum (Museum of Natural History as its known today) and the La Brea Tar Pits. The stop motion animation of dinosaurs battling and coming to life on the silver screen would leave a lasting impression on him. In 1925, Ray’s parents took him to see the film The Lost World.
#Forced perspective in stop motion movie
His parents, Martha and Fred Harryhausen, nurtured Ray’s passions and often took him on day trips to museums, movie houses and the ocean. Ray Harryhausen was born June 29, 1920, in Los Angeles, California. Since he has given us so many resources from which to pull inspiration, and all his films are easily accessible through DVDs and the internet, it is most useful to focus on his life and the methods which allowed him to create such an amazing collection of work. Several books have been written about and by Ray Harryhausen and many interviews have been conducted with him.
Not only that, but in his work he achieved a level of real movement in his animation that is jaw-dropping even against the modern computer-generated movies of contemporary Hollywood. But Harryhausen never used frame-grabbing computers in his animation. Sure, it’s easy in our modern day world of technology to plug our cameras into a computer and then see exactly what we have captured instantly. His work is often referred to as “magic” and his visionary take on mythical creatures and aliens has inspired many others in the world to become not just animators, but writers, painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and comic book artists.įew people today could even attempt his style of animation using film, rear-projection, and surface gauges, all the while bringing life to a foam rubber puppet. That person is none other than the great legendary animator Ray Harryhausen.
There are very few people in history that hold the “Ultimate Legend” label and only one that man can truly be called the “Most Famous Stop Motion Animator of All Time”. To be the “Ultimate Legend” of any given subject, however, you must have done many, many extraordinary feats that often look or sound impossible. Ray Harryhausen is a legend and to be a legend, in a manner of speaking, usually entails achieving only one thing of greatness in life that stands out amongst a person’s achievements. Ray Harryhausen: The Legendary Life of an Animation Master
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