WILLIS H O’BRIEN AND RAY HARRYHAUSEN

Discover as much as you can about Willis H O’brien and Ray Harryhausen
in 10 minutes. Write your findings in the text box below
Willis H O’Brien:
 Willis H O’Brien was born on March 2nd 1886
 Willis H O’brien died on November 8th 1962
 Willis H O’Brien worked on films that inspired other creators in the future
like, King Kong and The Lost World
 Willis H O’Brien’s First animation that he made was The Dinosaur and the
Missing Link
 He won an academy award (Oskar) in 1950 for the Best Visual Effects
 He was a professional boxer

Ray HarryHausen:
 Ray HarryHausen was born on the 29th June 1920
 Ray HarryHausen Died on the 7th May 2013
 Ray HarryHausen was married to Diana Livingstone Bruce
 Ray HarryHausen is famous for the swordfight sequence in Jason and the
Argonauts
 Ray HarryHausen worked on movies as a special effects artist. His movies
include:
- Clash of The Titans (1981)
- The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad(1973)
- One Million Years B.C (1966)
- Mysterious Island (1961)

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 - 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
- Mighty Joe Young (1949)

 Ray Harryhausen won 3 awards:

- Gordon E. Sawyer Award (1992)
- ADG’s Outstanding Contribution To Cinema Imagery Award (2008)
- BAFTA Special Award (2010)

Tutor Explanation
O’Brien and Harryhausen were pioneers of special effects and hailed as the
masters of stop-motion animation.

Their key works laid the foundations for special effects in Hollywood up until the
advent of computer generated.

What were some of the animators’ key works?

The Dinosaur and the The lost world King Kong
Missing Link
Jason and the Argonauts Clash Of The Titans

What do you think about the aesthetics of models. How would you describe how
they look. What do you think of them compared to modern day special effects?

MINIMUM 200 WORDS

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I think that the models back then were, still really good when it comes to the detail
that they go into in the model, the depth of detail that I liked was the detail in the
medusa model that was using animation for the eyes and the mouth, to give it
some life like features, other wise it will just look rubbish, the only bit that I don’t
like is the animation part its just the camera that was ruining it because they
didn’t have the high quality cameras and technology that we have now.

The Ray HarryHausen animation will be better than the Willis H. O’Brien
animations purely because the difference between the different times that they
were made in as the Willis H. O’Brien cameras wouldve been low quality and the
Ray Harryhausen wouldve been better because of the cameras that they were
using that were a higher quality.
Overall my favourite animation that was made by them was King Kong because
they can make the models interact with people, I especially like the part where
King Kong picks up the woman and walks off with her because they couldn’t
actually have a big model carrying a woman. I prefer Ray Harryhausen’s
animations because they are more astheticly pleasing because

Can you think of any influences these animators have had on future filmmakers?

 Peter Jackson
 Tim Burton
 Steven Spielberg
 John Carpenter

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