Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

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Retrology
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby Retrology » August 15th, 2017, 1:49 pm

Stop motion is cool. I remember growing up with the Wallace and Gromit shorts as a kid, as well as Chicken Run.

This was obviously the basis for the models in Clayfighter as well. I think Donkey Kong Country too?

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pacman000
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby pacman000 » August 15th, 2017, 2:46 pm

Retrology wrote:Stop motion is cool. I remember growing up with the Wallace and Gromit shorts as a kid, as well as Chicken Run.

This was obviously the basis for the models in Clayfighter as well. I think Donkey Kong Country too?


Clayfighter, Yes. Donkey Kong Country used pre-rendered 3d characters, similar to Bug! on the Saturn.

I believe DOOM used stop mo characters tho.

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pacman000
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby pacman000 » August 17th, 2017, 6:14 pm

I know the Critic hated this movie, but I have to give a shout out to it here: Krull.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HyzWBEToQw8

The Widow of The Web, which I've linked to, is a well realized sequence. I'm not sure how they made the spider transparent; usually stop-mo armatures have a metal skeleton. There's also a stop-mo transformation earlier in the film, man into goose.

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Stalvern
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby Stalvern » August 17th, 2017, 8:28 pm

The transformations in Krull aren't stop-motion; they're drawn by hand.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby VideoGameCritic » August 18th, 2017, 8:21 pm

Just remembered another great stop-motion movie. Remember the original Terminator?? That climax was scary.

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pacman000
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby pacman000 » August 19th, 2017, 11:28 am

Stalvern wrote:The transformations in Krull aren't stop-motion; they're drawn by hand.
I did not know that; thank you! Whoever did it did a good job; they certainly look 3d. (Or at least they do on a blurry old VHS.)

VideoGameCritic wrote:Just remembered another great stop-motion movie. Remember the original Terminator?? That climax was scary.
You also have to give credit to Stan Winston's puppetry. (R.I.P Mr. Winston. :cry:)

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pacman000
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby pacman000 » August 21st, 2017, 1:10 pm

The Wizard of Speed and Time (1989 ?) - An obscure cult film with a lot of stop motion FX. The main character is an animator who's trying to complete a film for TV; he's played by the film's director/FX artist who based it loosely on his own work experience. Bombed, and I think this was the last thing he did... Someone put it on YouTube, apparently with the director's permission.

http://youtu.be/3ldOTw60Ozg

Haven't watched all of it, but what I've seen has a nice quirky sense of humor.

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scotland
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby scotland » August 21st, 2017, 1:37 pm

Release the Kraken!

Image

Sorry, just in a thread on Harryhausen it needed to be said. Apparently, he called his craft 'dynamation'. Imagine all the work that went into his creations, which were often complex beyond what was needed. The Kraken above has four arms, when two would have worked - but Harryhausen seemed to want to go above and beyond. The skeletons in Jason - there are several of them, and the scene goes on for some time. In Golden Voyage, there is the 6 armed statue of Kali when he could have just animated a 2 armed statue of some other god. Nope. Even how he does the Colossus in Jason, where he actually wants the giant statue to seem slow and ponderous, works.

Clash of the Titans really got the brass ring though. Timing wise, 1981 hit a sweet spot when Star Wars said movie goers like fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons was a big thing, and before a couple of films failed to take off and plunge fantasy movies back into the B-film ghetto. The story structure, where there is sort of an Level 1 Boss with Calibos, who then continues to plague the heroes as they contest against his mother (like Beowulf in structure with Grendel then Grendel's mother), works. Medusa is like a Level 2 Boss, and then an exhausting repeat of Calibos and then quickly to the Kraken as the final boss. (Thetis herself is never physically contested, just her scheme fails and she has to suck on that lemon).

This was Harryhausen's swan song, and it was a good one. There are so many effects in this movie, from Calibos to the little mechanical owl to the giant scorpions, to Medusa and the Kraken. According to Wikipedia, some of the final second conflict with Calibos was removed, which sounds like Harryhausen might have already had done the work to do it, which would have been an awful shame to cut. I am surprised the movie only has a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes (which still soars above the 2010 remake's score).

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pacman000
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby pacman000 » August 21st, 2017, 2:21 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNg4KZKG96o

Talos, the Giant Statue from Jason & the Argonauts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROssbvtE41U

Kali, from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEVvCgdRg-I

Harryhausen talks about the Kraken.

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pacman000
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Re: Ray Harryhausen (And Stop-Mo in General.)

Postby pacman000 » August 27th, 2017, 1:13 pm

Phil Tippet talks about a movie he's been working on for the past 30yrs. There's some interesting time lapse footage of him working on the animation; you can see the characters moving naturally with Tippet and other animators buzzing around them in fast motion.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GLKxoo9hO84


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