Art of Ray Harryhausen
by Ray Harryhausen, Tony Dalton
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ray Harryhausen, Tony DaltonForeword: Peter Jackson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-09
ISBN: 0823084647
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Watson-Guptill
Book Reviews of Art of Ray Harryhausen
Book Review: a winner all the way
Summary: 5 Stars
At first inspection, it seemed pretty amazing. On closer inspection, I was blown away. If you are a fan of Harryhausen, you simply have to have this book. It's so incredibly well done. With this book, Harryhausen, now 90, has delivered his swan song. What a gem.
First of all, it's a large coffee-table book, heavy on the pictures and slim on the text. Harryhausen is one of the authors and he writes much of the text. The other author is Harryhausen's friend of over 30 years. Together they have raided the depths of Harryhausen's shelves and studios and come up with some rarely seen work.
This book does not reproduce stills from any of the movies that Harryhausen worked on: nothing that mundane. Instead, it's conceptual sketches, pictures of the models used, model sheets, storyboards from the films, etc. Most of the stuff is conceptual: not so much the way the monsters and stuff appeared in the the final films, but how the artistic conceptions of them evolved in the pre-production phases. The book assumes you're intimately familiar with the movies themselves.
The text -- alone worth the price of admission -- is Harryhausen's autobiographica artistica. He discusses his influences, his failures, his triumphs, his innovations, etc. Here's a sample of what you're in store for:
"While the drawings and paintings of Dore, Martin, Gany and Knight showed me that, given the skills and the talent, it was possible to put on paper or canvas almost any scenario you could imagine, it was Willis O'Brien (1886-1962) who took things a step further and showed me that whatever I imagined, no matter how extraordinary, could be brought to life on screen. It was through his films that I discovered the art of stop-motion animation but Obie also impressed on me the importance of design and the way in which my creations were constructed. It is him that I have to thank for teaching me how to put into three dimensions what I had only managed to do in two and so to bring 'alive' those creatueres that inhabited my fantasy 'lost world'. Obie was multi-talented, an accomplished artist in all the relevant areas of film-making." (p. 23)
A few of the illustrations in the book are not Harryhausen's, particularly in beginning of the book when he's citing his influences. All pictures are printed in matte. What a bargain.
Summary of Art of Ray Harryhausen
As one of the most highly acclaimed stop-motion animators in movie history, Ray Harryhausen was responsible for the dinosaurs, animals, mythological creatures, and aliens in such classic films as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, King Kong, Jason & The Argonauts, and War of the Worlds. These extraordinary creatures stole scene after scene from human actors, and this book shows how he developed them.When writing his autobiography, An Animated Life, Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton realized that they were working with a collection of art too extensive to share in one book. As a result, this companion volume lets readers explore the hoard of artwork that Harryhausen has preserved in his London home.
Reproduced to the highest standards, this artwork includes preliminary sketches, elaborate drawings of key scenes, and storyboards, all produced as he prepared to undertake the laborious task of animating each creature. Also shown here are the tiny, elaborately articulated models that Harryhausen created to play enormous roles, and the bronzes he cast to preserve their forms in perpetuity.
The stunning array of images in this book is a tribute to the vast scope of Harryhausen?s imagination and artistic skills. It is a collection that no one interested in special effects or cinema history can do without.
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