DEVELOPERS

Willis OBrien (1886-1962)

Was an American motion picture special effects and stop motion animation
pioneer.
He made models, including a dinosaur and a caveman, which he animated with
the assistance of a local newsreel cameraman. San Francisco exhibitor Herman
Wobber saw this 90-second test footage and commissioned O'Brien to make his
first film, The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915) for a
budget of $5,000.
Thomas Edison was impressed by the film and O'Brien was hired by the Edison
Company to animate a series of short films with a prehistoric theme, these
included R.F.D. 10,000 B.C. and Prehistoric Poultry (both 1917). During this time
he also worked on other Edison Company productions including Sam Loyd's The
Puzzling Billboard and Nippy's Nightmare (both 1917), which were the first stopmotion films to combine live actors with stop motion models.
Willis was a special effects artists who pioneered the technique of stop motion
animation and the man behind the 1933 classic film King Kong. He won the first
ever Oscar for special effects. He experimented with special effects using
figurines in short trick films.

Raymond / Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)

Was an American visual effects creator, writer and producer who created a form
of stop motion model animation known as Dynamtion
His mentor was Willis OBrien.
He innovative style of special effects in films inspired by may film makers such
as Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton and George Lucas. He spent his years
experimenting the production of animated films. Harruhausen worked on George
Pals short puppet films. He also worked with Ted Geisel (DR Seuss)
Dynamtion that split the background and foreground of pre shot live action
footage into two separate images into which he would animate models . The
background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated
in front of it, re-photographed with an animation-capable camera to combine
those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a
black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground
element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in
the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model
was "sandwiched" in between the two live action elements, right into the final
live action scene.
In most of Harryhausen's films, model animated characters interact with, and are
a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention
to themselves as "animation." Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were
created via Harryhausen's careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both
the set and the projector. This dramatically reduced much of degradation
common in the use of back-projection or the creation of dupe negatives via the

use of an optical printer. Harryhausen's use of diffused glass to soften the

sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed the matching of the soft
background plates far more successfully than Willis O'Brien had achieved in his
early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements
seamlessly in most of his shots. By developing and executing most of this
miniature work himself, Harryhausen saved money, while maintaining full
technical control.
He also developed models from the help of his father. His father