When I was growing up, my ambition was never to be a writer. In high school and even in college, my hope was to become a special effects maestro, and specifically to practice the arcane art of stop-motion animation, as epitomized by the fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen.
It is probably fortunate that I did not pursue this career path after leaving college. I never really had the patience, the single-minded focus, or the instinctive sense of movement required of a good animator. Moreover, jobs in that field have always been limited, and once Jurassic Park came out in 1993, stop-motion as an effects technique was effectively extinct. It survives in puppet films, like the recent, marvelously animated — and profoundly creepy – Coraline, and as a campy touch in a few live action films (e.g., the animated denizens of the North Pole in Elf).
I can't really mourn the passing of Ray Harryhausen's style of special effects, since the new CGI technology, at its best, can give us images Ray could only dream of. Even so, I still enjoy the handmade look of stop-motion, the genuine three-dimensionality of the figures (unlike the faux three-dimensionality of CGI critters), and the strangely surreal combination of animated models with live actors, which was Harryhausen's forte.
For a taste of this type of filmmaking, you can see the wonderful allosaurus sequence from One Million Years BC at this link. The scene starts at the 1:55 mark. Transfer quality is mediocre; the animation looks a lot better on DVD. Keep in mind that this movie was released in 1966, when most screen dinosaurs were depicted by iguanas or by men in rubber suits. Harryhausen was decades ahead of his time.
A few months ago, I was going through some junk in my closet and came across an old, half-finished dinosaur "armature" (metal skeleton) which I'd made years ago. I decided to finish it and eventually built up a foam-and-latex dinosaur out of it. I followed this up with a second dinosaur, for which I made the armature from scratch.
As I was making the second dinosaur, a styracosaurus, I decided to document the process in a blog. I made no attempt to publicize the blog because I wasn't sure how well the model would turn out. If it was lousy, I could delete the blog and no one would be the wiser!
But it turned out okay, so for those who may be interested, here it is: Building A Stop-Motion Model. The blog chronicles the construction of this two-foot-long dinosaur from its beginnings as a pile of metal parts to its completion. There are also a few brief animation clips, though animation, as I said, was never my strongest suit.
I admit this is a departure from the usual subject matter posted here, but after all, there's more to life than death!