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This guy.

Aw. Ray Harryhausen has been and gone. As Wikipedia put it, “The Harryhausen family announced his death via Twitter and Facebook on May 7, 2013.” He had lived in London since 1960. I did not know that.

I adored every frame of his stop-motion animation, but I think there’s a reason everyone points to this scene from Jason and the Argonauts. A slight jerkiness spoils the effect of an animated monkey or the sinuous snakes on Medusa’s head, but these bone soldier guys? They were splendid little models, and they moved exactly the way you’d expect an animated skeleton to move: all crouchy elbows and knees.

Here’s the fight scene. And here’s a short clip of Harryhausen talking about animating the skeleton fight in Sinbad.

(I’m sure the skeletons in Skyrim are an homage, but I love the fact they’re the biggest pussies in the land: lob a rock at them and they disintegrate into comical bone xylophones).

Anyway, RIP Harryhausen. And no, no-one had him in the Dead Pool.

May 7, 2013 — 9:47 pm
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