I've been one of Ray's fans since I can remember. His movies, his monsters and his art made me love stop motion films. Ray's films, like 20 million Miles to Earth, The Sinbad trilogy, Valley of Gwangi (I had a valley of Gwangi coloring book when I was a kid), First Men in the Moon, Jason and the Argonauts, Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms! I loooovvveeddd those movies as a kid, and a great deal of what I do today is because of his films.
Above is a clip that features another one of my heroes, Phil Tippett, who animated the Tauntauns and Imperial Walkers in Empire Strikes Back (I swear if you don't know what those characters are, gettaoudahere!!!) talking about Ray with Harry Knowles, the host and creator of aintitcoolnews.com. Tippet animated the greatest dragon I've even seen, no disrespect to Ray's dragon in Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, the spectacular Vermithrax Perjorative from Dragonslayer, which somehow bored my son to tears a few years ago.
Kids!
Here's a few scenes from Ray's work:
OMG this battle from Golden Voyage of Sinbad blew my mind in the good ol' Winnetka Drive-in theater in the early 1970's.
My son was very young when he saw Talos look down at Hercules(and the camera) in Jason and the Argonauts, and he simply hopped off the couch and got the heck outta there!!!
He was very young and there was no HALO to play back then.
Although HALO is pretty cool.
Gwangi fights an elephant in an empty arena in turn of the century Mexico and punched my imagination in the neck as a kid.
Jason fights a bunch of skeletons, and I want you to think about the fact that Ray had to animate each skeleton individually and keep track of each skeleton's moment from frame to frame!
A pretty cool scene from Beast from 20,000 fathoms...
Okay, there you go.
I'm gonna end this post with an image.
If YOU DON'T KNOW WHO THESE CHARACTERS ARE, THEN SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH YOU!!!
I'll give you a hint: They're NOT Ray Harryhausen's characters.
Have a nice day:)
