Ray Harryhausen, the pioneering American visual effects creator and master of stop-motion animation has died aged 92, report Coming Soon.
Harryhausen passed away earlier today in London, where he had lived since 1960.
After first experimenting with animation in home-made films in 1935, Harryhausen animated the 1942 short film Tulips Shall Grow. He went on to be responsible for the majority of the animation in Mighty Joe Young from 1949, for which the film was given the Academy Award For Special Effects. He went on to do arguably his most well-known work with the animation of The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad in 1958, which also marked the first time he called his trademark technique of animating ‘Dynamation’.
Tributes have been made by numerous film directors influenced by Harryhausen. Terry Gilliam said, “[w]hat we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits”, while both George Lucas and Peter Jackson acknowledged that without Harryhausen’s work, there would likely not have been, respectively, Star Wars or The Lord Of The Rings.
