Bear

I've been animating a Black Bear in all my spare moments. I've been rotoscoping her using acrylic on a lightbox.

Harryhausen at the BFI

Many, many big guys gathered to pay tribute to Ray Harryhausen at the BFI last night, my favourite two moments were Peter Jackson showing a supereight film of himself and a friend faithfully re-enacting the skeleton sword fighting scene from Jason and The Argonauts (but without being able to work out how to add the skeletons) and a very touching video tribute to Harryhausen from his friend Ray Bradbury, who he has known for seventy years. Harryhausen has been extraordinarily influential to all filmmakers working in fantasy and science fiction filmmaking but seems very gracious and self-effacing too, I've got a long list of films to watch!

Melies to Harryhausen

Last night's talk on the hundred years from Melies to Harryhausen was enlightening for an ignoramus like me and probably interesting to an educated fan too because there was a special flying saucer to see (from Earth Vs The Flying Saucers, 1956) and some personal stories from Tony Dalton, joint author of A century of Model Animation. with Ray Harryhausen. My sister and I didn't watch many films, or much tv when we were young (except John Craven's newsround) and so we missed out on the excitement of films such as Clash of the Titans (1981) and The 7th Voyage of Simbad (1958). I can't wait to see them all one by one. This youtube clip will give a flavour of his extraordinary skill, while I remember other highlights of the talk. Harryhausen is 90 this year, so there is an exhibition at the London Film Museum coming up, and why don't you see if you can get a return ticket for Saturday's Harryhausen birthday celebration at the BFI?

Ray Harryhausen

There are two Harryhausen celebrations at the BFI, one tomorrow and one on Saturday. If you can't come I'll try to post some thoughts here later.