Tag: ray harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen, “Twenty Million Miles to Earth”: Film History Series

“Twenty Million Miles to Earth”, 1957

Ray Harryhausen’s original design for the monster was a giant cyclops, similar to the one he later used in the 1958 “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”. He discarded the idea after making a clay model of it, and eventually settled on the reptilian Ymir. The Ymir roars in the film are variations of elephant roars sped up and modulated in pitches at different rates.

Since he planned to use a real elephant for some of the footage in the zoo, Ray Harryhausen asked for one that was 15 feet tall, but the film studio was only able to procure an eight-foot-tall one for him. In order to make the elephant look much bigger, a 4’6″ actor was cast to play the zookeeper.

Reblogged with thanks to http://ensalada-de-lengua-de-pajaritos.tumblr.com

Ray Harryhausen

Detailed Sketches by Ray Harryhausen

As one of the most highly acclaimed stop-motion animators of the pre-digital era, Ray Harryhausen worked on some all-time classic movies, including War of the Worlds, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, and the epic Clash of the Titans.

The creatures Ray animated would always steal the scenes from the human actors – he managed to make them gruesome but also emotive. To achieve this Ray would immerse himself in the movie project, creating rough sketches before drawing a scene and then preparing the sequence’s storyboards.

Only then would he construct the models and begin the task of animating the titanic battle that would ensue. Working in clay to create his models, Ray would then painstakingly design the creature’s moveable skeleton before covering the armature in latex and the days of animation could begin.