Born in 1920 in Los Angeles, Ray Harryhausen, the visual effects animator who made a career of injecting the fantasy into fantasy films, has died in London. Harryhausen brought monstors and mythological beasts to life, sculpting then shooting clay models frame by frame, movement by movement. It took three months of painstaking special effects to complete a short scene in the 1963 film, “Jason and the Argonauts”. The movie features some of the earliest and most noted examples of stop-motion animation, which was pioneered by Harryhausen.
