RRRRRAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!

[LucasM]

There's no place for 'just sad', so I'll put this here:

Ray Harryhausen, special effects pioneer, dies at 92
by Adam B. Vary

Ray Harryhausen, whose dazzling and innovative visual effects work on fantasy adventure films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963) augured the explosion of effects-driven cinema over the last 30 years, died in London on May 7 at the age of 92, according to his Facebook page.

Born in Los Angeles in 1920, Harryhausen began his love affair with stop-motion animation early after watching the seminal effects movie King Kong (1933). He started making his own stop-motion films in his family's garage while connecting with a burgeoning science-fiction fan community in L.A., including life-long friend Ray Bradbury, who would become one of the pre-eminent sci-fi authors of the 20th century. Harryhausen, meanwhile, won work under a succession of filmmaking pioneers, including visual effects guru George Pal on Pal's popular Puppetoons shorts, director Frank Capra on the Army Motion Picture Unit during World War II, and finally Kong animator Willis O'Brien on the 1949 giant gorilla film Mighty Joe Young, which won an Oscar for its special effects.

Harryhausen quickly became a sought-after effects artist in his own right, working on studio adventure films that culminated with The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad in 1958. Filled with expertly rendered and designed visual wonders, the film climaxed with an iconic fight sequence between the title hero and a sword-wielding skeleton, a spectacle that Harryhausen topped five years later with a whole horde of warring skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. The sequences revolutionized how actors could interact with stop-motion effects, a process Harryhausen called "Dynamation."

Harryhausen's effects work continued through the 1960s and '70s on films like the 1967 Raquel Welch movie One Million Years B.C. and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad in 1974, ending with the 1981 mythological epic Clash of the Titans. In 1992, he received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for Technical Achievement at the Scientific and Technical Achievement portion of the Academy Awards. At the event, host Tom Hanks said, "Some say Citizen Kane is the greatest motion picture of all time. Others say it's Casablanca. For me, the greatest picture of all time is Jason and the Argonauts."

[Tripe]

 

[MartyS (Gromit)]

There's an RIP thread in the "movies" section, I'll repeat what I said there, he gave his stop motion characters real personality, not sure there is anyone else that was ever able to do it as well as he did.

[k1]

My backup drive(s) and two of my external drives keep randomly disconnecting from my Mac all day yesterday & today.  When the first one went I thought "hm. something's wrong with the backup drive."  Then the others started crapping out.  Now I'm thinking there's something going wrong with my iMac rather than the drives...

[LucasM]

There's an RIP thread in the "movies" section, I'll repeat what I said there, he gave his stop motion characters real personality, not sure there is anyone else that was ever able to do it as well as he did.

That's an excellent point; his Bubo was very different from his Medusa or Tantalos.

The main one I always look to is the Ymir's birth in 20 Million Miles to Earth.  Where, after hatching, he[?] gets up and when the lights are turned on, he rubs his eyes.  Just marvelous.  That is still one of my favorite films.

I used to study his work on Super8 film frame by frame, read everything I could find about him, and from studying his work, did my own model and clay animation late in my teens.  [Still have my film, which runs about 18 minutes (ALL animated; no live action), but the main drive belt in my projector was made of real rubber and melted over the years.  Can't find a replacement.]  I still have a nice note from his wife from years ago, responding to a letter from me (he was out on location filming Golden Voyage of Sinbad at the time, which is why she said she responded instead of him).

[A technical point: it was Steven Archer that animated Bubo most of the time.  Honestly, I'm not sure Ray would've made him as cute/bordering on silly had he been doing that work.]

[Edward J Grug III]

There's no place for 'just sad', so I'll put this here:

Ray Harryhausen, special effects pioneer, dies at 92
by Adam B. Vary

Ray Harryhausen, whose dazzling and innovative visual effects work on fantasy adventure films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963) augured the explosion of effects-driven cinema over the last 30 years, died in London on May 7 at the age of 92, according to his Facebook page.

Born in Los Angeles in 1920, Harryhausen began his love affair with stop-motion animation early after watching the seminal effects movie King Kong (1933). He started making his own stop-motion films in his family's garage while connecting with a burgeoning science-fiction fan community in L.A., including life-long friend Ray Bradbury, who would become one of the pre-eminent sci-fi authors of the 20th century. Harryhausen, meanwhile, won work under a succession of filmmaking pioneers, including visual effects guru George Pal on Pal's popular Puppetoons shorts, director Frank Capra on the Army Motion Picture Unit during World War II, and finally Kong animator Willis O'Brien on the 1949 giant gorilla film Mighty Joe Young, which won an Oscar for its special effects.

Harryhausen quickly became a sought-after effects artist in his own right, working on studio adventure films that culminated with The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad in 1958. Filled with expertly rendered and designed visual wonders, the film climaxed with an iconic fight sequence between the title hero and a sword-wielding skeleton, a spectacle that Harryhausen topped five years later with a whole horde of warring skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. The sequences revolutionized how actors could interact with stop-motion effects, a process Harryhausen called "Dynamation."

Harryhausen's effects work continued through the 1960s and '70s on films like the 1967 Raquel Welch movie One Million Years B.C. and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad in 1974, ending with the 1981 mythological epic Clash of the Titans. In 1992, he received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for Technical Achievement at the Scientific and Technical Achievement portion of the Academy Awards. At the event, host Tom Hanks said, "Some say Citizen Kane is the greatest motion picture of all time. Others say it's Casablanca. For me, the greatest picture of all time is Jason and the Argonauts."

Sad news indeed. (There is an under-used 'sad cafe' thread, btw.)

[Tripe]

For me, a kid of the late '70s/'80s, Clash of the Titans was really my only major exposure to Harryhausen.

See that's interesting because the Sinbad movies and Jason were always on British TV when I was growing up it seemed, as well as others of his film. In fact, how was Clash financed? I wonder if his popularity in Blighty might have provided a large part of the momentum to have it made.

[k1]

My Mac is dead.     Won't boot.  If I'm lucky I get a kernel error

Any projects I'm working on are pretty much not getting finished any time soon.  I needed to have a few of them finished really soon in order to get $ to pay off some outstanding bills.  Now it looks like I'm going to have to get a new Mac... F.  Here's hoping it's just a hard drive failure and not anything worse.

(Thankfully thanks to Dropbox I should still have all the files needed for that riff with One Man Band)

[Bob]

Ugh, sorry about that.  We all know when the PC is going to die.....and there is nothing we can do about it, other than just wait.

[RVR II]

Dammit! I hit a deer on the way home from work tonight.. It was a doe and may have been pregnant as it's stomach area was still moving when I stopped to check the damage..

The front of my truck is a mess and to top it all off, I have liability insurance only

Spoiler

[LucasM]

 

[Tripe]

Seconded.

[Bob]

Well, at least that is the damage.  Yeah, not fun, but you read about much worse deer hits all the time.

[MSTJedi]

Well, at least that is the damage.  Yeah, not fun, but you read about much worse deer hits all the time.

A girl I dated way back hit a deer in a Focus hatchback once. Totaled the thing, as you can imagine. Busted up the front and smashed in the windshield. Luckily, she was okay.

[Mrs. Dick Courier]

Seconded.

thirded

poor deer you would think after all this time deer would have evolve some and learn that car=bad