Assignment 1 -(Developers)

Task 1 – Developers

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen was born in Los Angeles and grew up with a love for dinosaurs and fantasy, his parents later on encouraged his interest in films and model making. He was inspired by the cinematic effects that were used in King Kong and The Lost world. After seeing these two films he began experimenting with Stop-Motion animation in his parent’s garage. At the age of 18 he met with Willis O’Brien who he later worked with on many future projects. His first animation job was with producer George Pal where he worked on the short films “Puppetoons” which was stop-motion. He then caught the attention of Charles Schneer a producer who he worked with on the majority of films. This means that Ray was important in the development of stop-motion animation as he worked on it almost his whole life and made many big animated films. Rays techniques link to the techniques used in the modern day as Ray experimented to find useful stop-motion techniques which get used to this day. Without Ray's experimenting on stop-motion we wouldn't have animations like Godzilla which is similar to the early shorts that he made (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9kmjW73-v4).

Willis O’Brien

Willis’ mastery in animation has helped to inspire the mind’s eye for generations through his short stop-motion films. His legacy was made through many years of developing techniques that were innovative at the time. Willis’ artistic road began in his teenage years when he briefly worked as a cowboy, cartoonist and a boxer which we see in his work later. He molded rubber to the surface of human and animal figures to give them character and freedom to move for his stop-motion animations. King Kong was created by accident by Willis as he and a co-worker mad tiny boxers and were going to stage a match, this then grew into years of knowledge when one day he thought of Kong. His methods led to him catching the attention of Thomas Edison and the Edison company so they hired him and he was told to produce many prehistorical animated shorts. O’Brien even produced a rubber bladder to put into his figures that you could inflate and deflate to give the effect that the character was actually breathing, so that meant that his figures could move, fight and breathe which fuelled many people imaginations. To portray Kong in the right way Willis would go to zoos and study the gorilla’s movements and he would also go to boxing matches to improve the fight scenes between the characters. He also began to use a blue screen behind his characters so he could put existing images behind his animation. Willis continued to write several new film concepts after Kong but only had the financial backing to actually complete a few. During the time that he was filming the follow up from King Kong (Son of Kong) his ex-wife choose to shoot both his children and she even killed herself. Willis O’Brien is known to the world as the man that created Kong and he was greatly recognised for this big achievement as he was given a special Oscar in 1950. He is ranked as a legend among Horror, dinosaur and animation fans. This has effected the modern day stop-motion animation techniques as without Willis we wouldn't of had our characters with as much detail. An example of an extremely popular stop-moton that Willis O'Brien made is King Kong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sND4F3hdBS4) which is still extremely popular as it has been re-animated.

Jan Svankmajer

Jan Svankmajer is a well-known Czech puppeteer, animator, filmmaker who has made dark versions of fairy tales. He studied at the school of performing arts in Prague from 1950 – 1954 before joining the puppetry department at the academy of performing arts. His first short film that he made displayed his interest in stop motion as it was two magicians competing against each other, this was called “The last Trick” and it was made in 1964. Svankmajer won 30 awards for his work in film although he was still unknown in North America. He started making films in 1960 although his first film only reached western Europe in 1982 received critical acclaim. His films weren’t able to reach a wider audience in 1968 as the Soviet Union who had just invaded the Czech Republic restricted what was produced. After the Soviet Union fell Svankmajer’s reputation grew. This links to present day animation as it shows that you can show your own opinions of things through animation and you can make the animations as random as you like. For example Jan Svankmajer made this random animation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7abCEq0Qla4)