about musculature . By 1940 , he began to work on an epic feature length-film which was about the prehistoric life on earth .
Harryhausen was in need of a job which would finance future projects , so he showed his unfinished “ Evolution ” piece to the producer George Pal , who described it as “ Brilliant ”, and offered Harryhausen a job on a series of short films he was producing , Puppetoons . Harryhausen worked alongside George Pal for two years , who went on to win several Oscars for his work .
In 1953 , Harryhausen was given charge of his first feature film , with Charles H Scheener as producer . It was called ‘ Beast from 20,000 Fathoms ’. It was an adaptation of one of Ray Bradbury ’ s stories , and the two of them worked together on the film . It was shot on a very low budget , as Harryhausen could not afford high speed film and had to animate each of the scenes by hand . The feature film proved popular with the public after its release . By 1958 , Harryhausen had gained international recognition after he created the special effects for the ‘ Seventh Voyage of Sinbad ’, which also proved popular at the box office , and grossed over $ 6 million . It took over a year to compete because they shot the stop-motion in colour , which made it complicated to complete . This was his first colour film .
Harryhausen moved to the UK in the 1960 ’ s , making him a dual US-UK citizen , where he lived in London until he died in 2013 . During his life , his original style of special-effects in films , inspired several other filmmakers , such as George Lucas , Steven Spielberg , Peter Jackson and Tim Burton .
Lotte Reiniger was born on 2 June 1899 in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin and died in 1981 . She was a German film director and the leading pioneer of Silhouette Animation . Silhouette Animation is a type of animation which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes . It is usually done with backlighting and cardboard cut-outs . As a child , Reiniger enjoyed the Chinese art of shadow puppetry , inspiring her to create her own silhouette animations for a parental audience . In the 1920 ’ s , Reiniger made short animations , including ‘ Cinderella ’ in 1922 , and an animated fairy-tale feature film named ‘ The Adventures of Prince Achmed ’ in 1926 , which was one of the first animated feature-length films . It failed to find a distributor for almost a year , but once it premiered in Paris , it was a huge success . In 1929 , Lotte Reiniger co-directed her first German live-action film , but unfortunately , the film was completed just as sound was introduced to Germany , and so the release of the film was delayed until 1930 , to dub in voices by different actors , which turned out a disappointing result .