Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen was an American visual effects creator, producer and writer. He is known for creating his own style of stop-motion animation called 'Dynamation'. He was the inspiration for many modern animators that are still famous today.

Ray's first job was working on George Pal's Puppetoons animations.  From that he worked for the Special Services division under Col Frank Capra as a loader, clapper boy, goffer and later on as a camera assistant during WW2. Whilst doing this he also worked on his own short films at home.

His first solo featuer film was released in 1953 and was call the 'The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. It was produced for Warner Brothers pictures and was a huge box office hit. Within the film he used a new animation technique that split up the foreground and background into two separate images - this resulted in smooth stop motion animation.

Harryhausen began to experiment with colour when producing the documentary 'The Animal World'. He experimented a lot with various colour stocks to overcome the colour-balance and light-shift problems he encountered. He was approached for help by Willis O'Brien who was struggling to meet the short deadline set to finish the eight minute long dinosaur sequence. This was Harryhausen's first professional colour work and was the first sequence shown in the film.

Following this, he began a convenient partnership with producer Charles Schneer, who was working with the B-Picture unit of Columbia Pictures. The first film released was in 1955 and was called 'It came from beneath the sea'. This was quickly followed by 'Earth vs. the Flying Saucers' that was released only a year later in 1956.

During the 1970's and through the 2000's, Ray Harryhausen wrote many books, novels and fantasy scrapbooks. These were designed to guide and inspire young animation pioneers of the new Century.  He also made big production films alongside his writing passion that have inspired re-makes in the turn of the new Century, e.g. 'The Golden Voyage of Sinbad' and 'Clash of the Titans'.