Ray Harryhausen, 1920-2013

Stop-motion pioneer and genius Ray Harryhausen has died:

Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animation legend whose work on “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,” “Jason and the Argonauts” and other science fiction and fantasy film classics made him a cult figure who inspired later generations of filmmakers and special-effects artists, has died. He was 92.

Harryhausen died Tuesday in London, where he had lived for decades. His death was confirmed by Kenneth Kleinberg, his longtime legal representative in the United States.

In the pre-computer-generated-imagery era in which he worked, Harryhausen used the painstaking process of making slight adjustments to the position of his three-dimensional, ball-and-socket-jointed scale models and then shooting them frame-by-frame to create the illusion of movement. Footage of his exotic beasts and creatures was later often combined with live action.

His work began with short subjects in the 1940s and continued for sixty years. His technique of rear and front projecting footage one frame at time while animating to do stop-motion, originally invented to keep costs down and which he called “Dynamation”, continues to be used today. His remarkable work inspires much of the look of special effects today, including what’s one in computer graphics rather than the time-consuming and costly stop-motion animation.

I don’t know that anyone so embodies Edison’s wisecrack that genius was 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration. The time and effort that his work required, much of done alone or with just an assistant or two was enormous.