Slow Genius

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here's a brilliant tribute that explains why Ray Harryhausen's work remains impressive.

So now I'm thinking that acting ability and underlying design also play into why I found his original The Clash of the Titans more plausible than the remake.  

It doesn't matter how flashy the surface is.  If the substructure isn't secure, your audience will be thinking "Why isn't this as awesome as it looks like it should be?" instead of "KILLER SKELETONS AAAAAHHH RUN AWAY!!!"

Because seriously, when you roll some dice and say "Skeletons are attacking you," whole generations of gamers were thinking of Harryhausen's creeptastic ones and if the game master does the description right, the PCs will run.

*cackle*

Comments

[brushwolf]

To me, Harryhausen's stuff moves kinda clunky and doesn't look entirely believable. That said;

This is one guy animating. And he's not just animating, he's not just doing stop motion (which I think is way harder to pull off than traditional 2d stuff) but animating on ones so it can be mixed with live action. And he's not just the animator; he's the concept artist, modeler and rigger for this stuff (you notice that unlike Aardman or Laika, he's basically stuck trying to be realistic, rather than pull believability from cartooniness). And he's doing this in the 60s and 70s without decades of other folks' experience and instruction.

So yeah, he was ridiculous degrees of completely amazing.