enthusiast who actually made a rare visit to Harryhausen while he was working on 7th Voyage of Sinbad. This visit so inspired the young Danforth that he went on to practice the art with a technical sophistica- tion unmatched at the time. David Allen was another gifted fan who turned professional after seeing Harryhausen’s remarkable work. Danforth, Allen, and others such as Dennis Muren and Randall Cook would work together and alone to strive to re-create the types of films Harryhausen and his brilliant pro- ducer Charles Schneer had created. Some of their more notable accom- plishments of this period were 7 Faces of Doctor Lao, Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, When Dino- saurs Ruled the Earth, The Crater Lake Monster, Q, and Caveman starring Ringo Starr. Many of these films adopted the technique of Dynama- tion and are excellent examples of the art. Making fantasy films of this nature during the 1960s and 1970s was exceedingly difficult, as produc- ers were unwilling to accommodate the long production schedules inher- ent in these types of animation films until Star Wars became a huge hit.
Phil Tippet
Phil Tippet was one of the third generation of stop motion artists who was responsible for the Figure 7.2 Ray Harryhausen animating the Roc for the 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Photo courtesy Archive-Editions.com.
Figure 7.3 A Dynamation shot from 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Photo courtesy Archive-Editions.com.
animated creatures of the holo- graphic chess game in the first Star Wars film. The tremendous success of Star Wars allowed Tippet to join the illustrious crew of ILM and raise the bar yet again for the stop motion art. The Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) facility built upon the work of Harryhausen and through the use of large teams of animators and technicians created an enormous number of memorable fantasy crea- tures for classic films. Harrison Ford riding the Ton Ton, the large walking tanks in the snow battle of the Star Wars sequel, and many others. The traditional art came to a high point in the film Dragonslayer.
Go Motion
One of the main techniques utilized for many years by ILM was the use of computer-controlled cameras dubbed motion control. The idea that you could move a camera and repeat its movement exactly smashed the limitation of latent image technique, which was that all ele- ments had to be locked off, as you couldn’t synchronize camera move- ment. Motion control changed all that and allowed the camera to identically repeat matte passes and element passes to combine later to create startling dynamic composites. The tremendous advantage a repeat- ing camera also gave was the ability to reproduce blur in a moving object.
When shooting stop motion anima- tion, you always obtain a perfectly sharp frame with no blur. Although Figure 7.6 Jim Aupperle sets up a Dynamation shot for his film Planet of Dino-
saurs (1978). Aupperle is using a two-screen front projection process that is similar to the exercise we will be doing with green screen. Farino, Aupperle, and I were the fourth generation of stop motion artists who found careers in the effects field because of the tremendous success of the Star Wars films. Photo courtesy of Jim Aupperle.
Figure 7.5 From left to right, the author and Ernest Farino discussing an animation sequence for the film The Strangeness (1985). Courtesy of Chris Huntley, thestrange- ness.net and codereddvd.com.
this effect is fine for most things such as puppet animation, it becomes problematic when you directly com- posite animation over blurring live action. For some subjects it can be magical, as with Harryhausen’s skeleton fight with Jason in Jason and the Argonauts. The sharp-edged appearance gave the skeletons an unearthly weird look that heightened the fantasy. ILM, being perfectionistic, began experimenting with moving the puppet’s limbs during the stop frame exposure through the use of motion control. This generated an overall blur to the creatures that greatly enhanced their realism. This technique was dubbed go motion and was introduced in the groundbreaking film Dragonslayer. The introduction of the dragon utilizing this technique left audiences aghast in wonderment.
Even though go motion was extremely time and labor intensive, it was scheduled for use in Jurassic Park until the remarkable success of computer graphics as a new technique took hold. While Jurassic Park marked the end of the traditional stop motion era, Tippet still wound up animating previsualization sequences for the film that formed the template for the computer-generated imagery (CGI). Since that time, Tippet has adapted his hard-won skills as a stop motion animator to CGI methods to create an impressive stream of new fantasy creatures that long ago germinated from a tiny seed planted by an old cowboy named Willis O’Brien.