Ray Harryhausen was five when The Lost World was released and thirteen when King Kong was released, both of which he watched in awe. He studied art, anatomy and filmmaking in order to learn to animate in the same way O’Brien did. At age 20 he worked for George Pal making replacement heads for the Puppetoons. In 1949 Willis O’Brien contacted Harryhausen to help in the making of Mighty Joe Young. Harryhausen did most of the animation for this film even though O’Brien won the oscar for it. As the success of stop motion films grew it became seen as expensive so Harryhausen made B-movies. In 1963 he released cult classic, Jason and the Argonauts.
(Jason and the Argonaughts 1963)
This film is regarded as his best work and was able to be booked in A theatre rather than much of his previous work in B theatres. He developed his animations from O’Brien and George Pal as they both made their own puppets for their animations. Harryhausen’s last work in 1981 The Clash of the Titans made $41 million at the American box office. The special effects for this film were made by Harryhausen in stop motion. O’Brien used a split screen to use animation and live actors at the same time on screen, however, Harryhausen developed this so that the stop motion effects could be layered over the actors. For example, in the battle with medusa in Clash of the Titans Perseus kills Medusa and picks up her head. In the scene (see below) the snakes on her head are still animated while Perseus is holding it. This was a leap forward in special effects as it meant there were much less limitations of how live actors could interact with the animated characters. This lead to work such as the animated snake in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, where the live actors can interact with the animations.
(Medusa Scene from Clash of the Titans)