RAY HARRYHAUSEN

The technique of stop-motion model animation - bringing models to life by filming them one frame at a time - was the most important way of creating cinematic monsters and fantasy creatures before the advent of computer-generated imagery. It is a technique that will forever be associated with names of Willis O'Brien, the creator of "King Kong", and Ray Harryhausen, whose films thrilled a generation of post-World War II movie-goers. But the first crude model animations were made in the 1890s and in the first two decades of the twentieth century pioneers producing short animated films before O'Brien created the first two animated features, "The Lost World" and "King Kong" in the dying days of silent film. Moreover, stop-motion model animation is still alive and flourishing, most notably in the work of directors Tim Burton and Aardman Animation's Nick Park, whose plasticine creations have starred in major hits such as Chicken Run and The Curse of the Were-rabbit.In this book, Ray Harryhausen and his co-author Tony Dalton trace the history of the genre to which Ray devoted the whole of his working life, from the almost accidental discovery that inanimate objects could be brought to life on the screen to movies such as Jurassic Park, which combined model animation with computer-based techniques to bring a new generation of prehistoric creatures to life.In doing so he gives his readers a fascinating insight into the patience and ingenuity of the animators, explains the development and refinement of the technology, especially that which enabled actors and animated models to interact on the same screen, and gives us tantalising glimpses of the many abandoned projects which litter the history of model animation.The book is lavishly illustrated with stills, many of them from forgotten movies and never before published in book form, sketches and storyboards for projects, explanatory diagrams, rare photographs of animators and artists at work and a host of memorabilia.This book completes the trilogy that began with "Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life" and continued with "The Art of Ray Harryhausen". Tells the whole story of stop-motion model animation from the late nineteenth-century pioneers to the work of Tim Burton and Aardman Animation. It includes rare stills and many previously unpublished photographs showing Harryhausen and other animators at work and

In An Animated Life (Aurum, 2003) Ray Harryhausen told the story of his career as the acknowledged grandmaster of special effects in the pre-computer era, the creator of classics such as One Million Years BC, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of Titans. In this new book the focus is not on the movies themselves, but on the vast hoard of artwork which Harryhausen has carefully preserved in his London home. These include preliminary sketches, elaborate drawings of key scenes and carefully plotted storyboards, all produced as he sought backing for his next venture and prepared to undertake the laborious task of animating the prehistoric creatures, aliens and mythical monsters which stole scene after scene from the human actors. There are also the tiny, elaborately articulated models which Harryhausen created to play these roles and the bronzes which he cast to preserve their forms in perpetuity. This stunning array of images is a tribute to the scope of Harryhausen's imagination and his artistic skills which no student of special effects or cinema history will want to be without.