"Awe-SOME!"
shouted the lad in the red Pokémon cap. "That was way
better than the first one! I wish they got to kick that Chicken
Guy's butt!"
"I'm gettin' the video game for Christmas!" crowed his
pudgy young pal. "It's got Zurg and everybody in it!"
I watched the boys race across the multiplex parking lot, a delighted smile on my face. For the past ninety minutes we had been enraptured by the evening's showing of Toy Story 2 [2], [3] and a casual observer would have found little difference between their twelve years and my forty-three... except, of course, for the memories. I could recall leaving a theater nearly thirty-five
years ago no less excited and astounded, my heart still thumping
from the incredible adventures of Jason and the Argonauts. I babbled nonstop to my bemused father the entire way home, and that night I could not sleep. The next day in school was spent excitedly discussing giant living statues, sword-wielding skeletons, and the hideous, seven-headed Hydra. Technology has made stellar leaps since then; for the two lads at the multiplex, the original Toy Story might as well have been Metropolis or City Lights. They had been thoroughly spoiled by the coolest CGI effects, the way grossest monsters, and the most awe-some animation that modern software could generate. I, on the other hand, could still
appreciate those simpler times when the only way to make a toy move was through the artifice of stop-motion animation. Ray Harryhausen was just another name on the screen that day; for all I knew he swept up the sets after filming. Decades would pass before I realized I had seen the work of a genius
on the cutting edge of special effects technology, and it was even longer before I understood the secrets of his art. I could have sworn that the movie had been filmed on some incredible island known only to the filmmakers where gods threw unworldly tantrums and magic was as common as carpentry. There was no way I could know that Harryhausen was passionately struggling to refine what I, at age seven, considered absolute perfection. Another thing I didn't know: the malicious flying harpies tormenting blind old Phineas had progenitors dating back to the earliest days of animation.
The Challenge of Frame by Frame
In a technical sense all animation is stop-motion, but the industry generally uses the term to describe a process that utilizes puppets or moveable models rather than painted cels or computer imaging. Typically, the creation is built around a flexible armature and is moved from one gradual pose to another, frame by frame, so that the illusion of motion is achieved. If this sounds simple, consider the following: in filming his stop-motion opus The Nightmare Before Christmas, director Tim Burton [4] had to be satisfied with as few as thirteen seconds of footage per week due to the number of characters involved and the intricacies of their movements. Another consideration: few models, no matter how gargantuan they may appear in a finished film, are typically more than two or three feet high. The process of producing a full-grown dinosaur that interacts with tiny humans, another dinosaur, or a desperate military involves such visual tricks as static and traveling mattes, miniature sets and props, rear projection, and enough swivel joints, gears and wires to make an Indy 500 car look like a Tinkertoy. Those less skilled in this art may have their
effects ruined by clumsy posing, shoddy matte work, blue screen "spill," poor modeling, or grainy background footage. In the hands of a master, however, the audience is left stunned and amazed with virtually no idea how these spectacular illusions were achieved. So it was for me on that breathless afternoon in 1963.
The Earliest Animation The First Great Master
Almost from the moment motion-picture cameras came into existence, operators were aware of the tricks that could be created through frame-by-frame exposure. This knowledge may have been more the result of the clumsiness and unpredictability of these early machines than the imaginations of the filmmakers, but the first "trickfilms" using stop-motion animation began to appear as early as the 1890s. Most of these were charming efforts in which everyday objects were made to move as if they were actually alive and sentient, and many an audience marveled at the sight of brooms sweeping floors on their own accord or spools of thread marching in formation. One of modern animation's founders, J. Stuart Blackton, produced a number of these films, and in Russia the experimental filmmaker Wladislaw Starevicz expertly manipulated insects to perform actions that looked hauntingly human. It was one Willis O'Brien, however, that birthed the modern era of stop-motion through two novel accomplishments: O'Brien was the first successful stop-motion animator to deal with creations of pure fantasy, and the first to navigate the difficulties of merging his magic with live-action backgrounds and actors. His unforgettable 1925 opus, The Lost World, brought man, dinosaur and adventure together in a thrilling display of special effects virtuosity; this is still a great film when viewed today in the age of CGI.
O'Brien's success led to bigger, nay, monumental things. During
the early thirties while working at RKO, O'Brien was tapped by producer
Merian Cooper for a special project -- a movie about a mysterious
island, intrepid explorers and a giant, feral ape. King Kong
(1933) was a tour de force of stop-motion effects that
helped launch the picture into legend. Virtually every important
innovation that would be used in stop-motion over the next fifty
years was in this film, and these illusions were carried out with
astonishing proficiency. Kong's spectacular battle with a tyrannosaurus
rex is three-and-a-half minutes of breathless action and a masterful
lesson in stop-motion technique. Yet this seminal scene represents
only one-third of all the animation cuts in the film; O'Brien tops
himself repeatedly until his savage simian finally topples from
the Empire State building. It would be a hard road for Willis O'Brien
after King Kong. Although he would win an Oscar for his work
on Mighty Joe Young in 1949, much of O'Brien's career was
plagued by unscrupulous producers, personal tragedy and the burden
of being the only craftsman on hackwork B-pictures involving giant
monsters such as The Black Scorpion (1957) and The Giant
Behemoth (1959). O'Brien died in 1962 but left behind a lasting
legacy in the form of an artist who had been inspired by him.
Enter Harryhausen Perhaps the most significant contribution
that Harryhausen made to the art of stop-motion animation was the
infusion of personality into his creations. While it is true that
O'Brien was able to do this in a limited way, Harryhausen did for
stop-motion animation what Norm Ferguson did for cel animation;
his creatures, however surreal, displayed nuances of thought and
action that transcended their artificial origins. A Harryhausen
monster might, for example, quizzically tilt its head, ponder the
situation, and take a hesitant step backwards before acting; only
rarely did any of Harryhausen's beasts simply rampage across the
screen. An excellent example occurs in 20 Million Miles to Earth
(1957), one of Harryhausen's most underrated efforts: startled by
a light, the baby Venusian Ymir shields its face and rubs its eyes.
Later in the film, the beast encounters a dog for the first time
and flinches anxiously when it barks at him. In this, only his sixth
film, Harryhausen not only demonstrated mastery of the illusions
needed to integrate stop-motion into a live-action film, he also
proved himself a preeminent figure in character animation. Still,
the best was yet to come.
Ray Harryhausen spent much of his young life at the movies where
he saw two films that fired his young imagination: The Lost World
and King Kong. Harryhausen attended art school and later
met a former employee of RKO who explained some of O'Brien's secrets
to him. Harryhausen began to experiment, animate puppets, and follow
the path of his idol. After a stint working with George Pal on his
Puppetoons, Harryhausen made some stop-motion fairy tales and briefly
tried his hand at animated television commercials. He took the big
step of contacting Willis O'Brien in the early 1940s when O'Brien
was in the employ of MGM. Their meeting went well, and after WWII
ended O'Brien hired Harryhausen as an assistant for his new project,
another team-up with Merian Cooper featuring a giant ape. Mighty
Joe Young (1949) was Harryhausen's first big screen credit,
and it was well deserved; under the master's eye, Harryhausen did
some eighty-five percent of the animation sequences. As O'Brien's
career began to decline, the disciple began to surpass the master.
There were some good films made by Harryhausen
before Jason and the Argonauts including one verifiable masterpiece,
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). It was not until Jason,
however, that Harryhausen arguably reached full maturity as an artist.
Harryhausen himself (despite regrets about technical compromises
and time constraints) has called Jason his most satisfying
effort. Fans and historians may quibble as to whether this film
is the crown jewel of Harryhausen's career, but one fact is incontestable:
Jason is among the finest fantasy films ever produced, an
unforgettable romp through Greek mythology worthy of Homer. I can
still recall my astonishment in the theater that day. Even though
I believed I was watching puppets of some sort, all I could think
was: How did they do that!?! How did they build a model as
big as Talos? (They didn't.) How did Talos pick up the Argo?
(It was a miniature.) How could the harpy tear away a swatch of
Phineas' robe? (Invisible wires and careful matte work.) How could
all seven heads of the Hydra move at once without tangling the puppet's
strings? (There were none; Harryhausen apparently tracked all the
Hydra's movements himself without a written chart.) And how could
a Hydra puppet be holding a full-sized Acastus in its tail? (Because
Acastus was a puppet, too.)
And then, surpassing all else -- the scene where the Argonauts fight
seven living skeletons born of the Hydra's teeth. From the moment
the bony warriors burst up through the earth (courtesy of buried
platforms raised one frame at a time) until Jason leads them over
the edge of a cliff, I was transfixed -- too amazed at last to even
question what I was seeing. Where were all the strings and how did
the actors avoid being hopelessly snarled in them? Where did a puppet
get the strength to drive a sword through a live actor? Who cared?
By that point all I could do was gape in openmouthed wonderment
and surrender to total fantasy.
The Technique Continues... After I began writing this column, I went
over to the local video palace and rented their copy of Jason
and the Argonauts. I had not seen the film for many years. Before
long Talos was staring balefully at me from his pedestal, ready
to wreak vengeance for his stolen treasure, and it still gave me
chills. The harpies were as cruel, the Hydra as creepy, and the
skeletons as menacing as ever. How did they do that!?! This
time I knew how, but what did that matter? As I became lost again
in the surreal world of stop-motion adventure, my mind went back
to those two excited boys at the multiplex and I smiled to myself.
My generation may have had stop-motion while theirs had RenderMan,
but we did have one thing in common: the good fortune to be thrilled
by the best that animation had to offer, regardless of time or technique.
One can only wonder what comes next.
Today Ray Harryhausen [9] is
retired. He remains an avid supporter of stop-motion, refuting any
suggestions that the technique has become antiquated. In a 1991
interview for Animato, Harryhausen expressed doubts that
Jason and the Argonauts could have been done with computers.
This may have been true in 1991, but probably less so today; the
effects that Harryhausen masterfully rendered through stop-motion
can indeed be replicated through CGI software and motion-capture
technology. The beginning of the end was likely Jurassic Park
(1994), in which stop-motion was used more for CGI modeling than
for actual dinosaur effects. Through a gadget known as a DID (Digital
Input Device), stop-motion dinosaurs were filmed and their movements
fed into a computer; technicians did the rest. Still, Harryhausen
need not fear; his beloved art is by no means dead. Stop-motion
will continue to be used with DIDs in creating special effects,
and films that cannot afford CGI or motion-capture will continue
to rely on stop-motion techniques. Plus, we have the upcoming Aardman
films like Chicken Run [10]. [11]
The same goes for television: we are all looking forward to another
season of The
PJs [12]. So it should be; stop-motion remains one of the most
imaginative and entertaining forms of animation ever devised. When
crafted by masters such as Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Jim
Danforth or Phil
Tippett [13], stop-motion effects can be downright spectacular.
Animation World Magazine would like to give a special thanks
to the Animation Art Gallery London for providing the Ray Harryhausen
film images for this issue.
Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and
fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.
Links:
[1] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3656
[2] http://www.awn.com/mag/issue4.09/4.09pages/cohentoystory2.php3
[3] <FONT COLOR="#000000">http://www.awn.com/mag/issue4.09/4.09pages/cohentoystory2.php3
[4] http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.9/articles/frierson1.9.html
[5] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3657
[6] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3658
[7] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3659
[8] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3660
[9] http://mag.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=pageone&article_no=1073
[10] http://mag.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=pageone&article_no=1066
[11] http://www.awn.com/../jacksonaardicle.php3
[12] http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.11/3.11pages/amidigustafson.php3
[13] http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.2/3.2pages/3.2desertisland.html