Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen was a true pioneer and icon of cinema as stop motion animation special effects lit up the big screen for decades.
He enjoyed a forty year career working on some of the most loved movies and bringing some of the most iconic characters to life.
Mighty Joe Young was Harryhausen's first film assignment as an assistant animator and he was brought on board by animator Willis O'Brien.
Harryhausen was responsible for most of the animation work on Mighty Joe Young as O'Brien was left to deal with production issues on the movie.
The film may have been hot off the heels of King Kong but the animation was more sophisticated this time around - not to mention it showed off the talents of Harryhausen.
He would go on to work on the likes of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and It Came From Beneath the Sea throughout the fifties.
Into the sixties and he made his first of three Sinbad movies as well as possibly his most famous film of all time... Jason And The Argonauts.
Released back in 1963 Harryhausen is most famous for the army of skeletons that be brought to life in that movie.
It was a sequence that took three months to shoot and yet it remains one of the most iconic of all time.
Harryhausen's stop-motion scenes and the use of miniatures was pioneering for the time and inspired a generation of filmmakers.
Into the seventies and two more Sinbad movies followed; The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger - the former being considered the best of the trilogy.
1981 brought another of Harryhausen's classic films to the big screen as be brought characters such as the Kraken to life in Clash of the Titans.
But by the beginning of the eighties this form of special effects was beginning to die.
Not long after this movie was released Harryhausen returned from film.
Throughout his career Harryhausen was a pioneer who was willing to push the envelope and find new ways of creating and filming his creations.
He inspired an generation of filmmakers from Steven Spielberg to Nick Park as well as Edgar Wright and Peter Jackson and he will also be regarded as a trail blazer and one of the best.
Ray Harryhausen passed away at Hammersmith Hospital, London at the age of ninety two - he is wife and a daughter.
Tagged in Clash of the Titans