Special effects master Ray Harryhausen said that his first alien creation was a disaster
The special effects creator was frank about his early mistakes.
With such a rich career, finding Ray Harryhausen’s beginnings is like searching for the roots of a mighty oak tree. The creator provided special effects for some of the most popular science fiction films of previous decades, including The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and First Men in the Moon (1964).
While Harryhausen was an avid fan of fantasy, he admitted that he didn’t necessarily gravitate toward science fiction as a younger man.
“Although science fiction is not my favorite form of fantasy, I realized, when I started to look for subjects that I could develop as an amateur animator, that it offered a wide range of possibilities,” Harryhausen said, according to The Art of Ray Harryhausen, by Harryhausen and Tom Dalton.
Taking a walk down memory lane, Harryhausen recalled his first foray into the extraterrestrial.
“My first real foray into the alien field was in 1937 when I built a model which I called the Jupitarian,” said Harryhausen. Still early in his career, the creative admitted to making more than a few mistakes.
“All I wanted to do was to create something that had never been seen before,” said Harryhausen. “I really didn’t realize when I completed my basic drawing that it was so physically impractical; it was only when I was building the model and animating it that I became aware of how wrong it all was.”
It taught the young man a valuable lesson; while imagination fueled a project, practicality and realism were a necessity, no matter what.
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