Friday, 22 March 2013

Animators who pushed the boundaries of animation


There are several stop motion animators who made stop motion animation what it is today through their work and dedication to stop motion animation.


One of the greatest stop motion animators of all time was Willis O’Brien. Willis O’brien worked on several movies, with his first being ‘The Dinosaur and the missing link: A prehistoric Tragedy’.  This movie impressed Albert Einstein, and he was hired by the Edison company shortly afterwards to animate several sort prehistoric films. Later on in his career, he worked on the movie ‘ The lost world’. While the models featured in the movie itself went created by O’Brien, they were based heavily of his previously build models. Perhaps the most memorable film Willis O’Brien worked on was ‘King Kong ‘ in 1933. The models in the film king kong were actually created for another movie that never went ahead. Willis O’Brien actually inspired famous animators such as Ray Harryhousen and Pete Peterson into the industry thanks to the work he had done on several famous movies. 

Willis O'Brien










Another great asset to stop motion was Ray Harryhousen. Ray Harryhousen was inspired by Willis O’brien to becoming a stop motion animator, and used Model Animation much like Willis o’brien. Harryhousen worked on several movies, but he is most well known for his work on Jason and the argonaughts with the scene featuring  skeletal warrior battling the protagonist. The animation of these skeletons was very advanced for the time that the film was out, which led the scene to be memorable to many. Harryhousen however, did work on many other famous films such as Sinbad. Similarly to Jason and the argonaughts, there was a scene is Sinbad where the protagonist fights a single skeletal warrior. This animation took around 4 Months for Harryhousen to complete but was never matched by another animator for many years. This scene actually inspired many famous animators today such as Tim Burton.

Ray Harryhousen


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