When I read that stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen had died, I knew I had to make a post about it. He influenced and inspired so many other filmmakers, and fueled the imagination of generations of children, just as the work of Willis O'Brien in the movie King Kong had done for him as a young teenager. He is probably most known for the skeletons in Jason And The Argonauts, but I always loved his stop-motion dinosaurs the most, which appeared in movies such as The Animal World and One Million Years B.C.
One of my absolute favorite things he's done though is a project that he never finished. He started working on Evolution Of The World when he was still a teenager, around 18 years old. He clearly got better at what he did as his career went on, but there's something so beautiful about this unfinished film. The creatures seem so lifelike, and you can see the amount of imagination and passion that went into every frame. Just the other day I was thinking about posting it on this blog, but didn't get around to doing so. It would have been pretty strange if I had, because the very next post after it a few days later would have been this "RIP Ray Harryhausen" post. It seems fitting to post Evolution Of The World here now.
It's truly wonderful to see a man with a long, successful career of doing exactly what he seemed to be most passionate about. There's a lovely facebook post by Harryhausen's family that talks more about him, and has several quotes about him by a few of the filmmakers he influenced and inspired. You can also check out the "Creature List" on his official website to look at many of the creatures that he created for movies.
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