Hasta siempre Ray Harryhausen

La Medusa, en la versión de Ron Cole, esta triste por la muerte de su creador.

Ayer me llegó la muy triste noticia del fallecimiento del gran amado por todos, Ray Harryhausen, a través de la siguiente nota oficial que la familia del artista colgó en facebook y en la que se da buena cuenta del legado que nos ha dejado este dios de la animación stop-motion y el cine fantástico:

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen
Born: Los Angeles 29th June 1920
Died: London 7th May 2013.
The Harryhausen family regret to announce the death of Ray Harryhausen, Visual Effects pioneer and stop-motion model animator. He was a multi-award winner which includes a special Oscar and BAFTA. Ray’s influence on today’s film makers was enormous, with luminaries; Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, John Landis and the UK’s own Nick Park have cited Harryhausen as being the man whose work inspired their own creations.

Harryhausen’s fascination with animated models began when he first saw Willis O’Brien’s creations in KING KONG with his boyhood friend, the author Ray Bradbury in 1933, and he made his first foray into filmmaking in 1935 with home-movies that featured his youthful attempts at model animation. Over the period of the next 46 years, he made some of the genres best known movies – MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949), IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955), 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957), MYSTERIUOUS ISLAND (1961), ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966), THER VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969), three films based on the adventures of SINBAD and CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981). He is perhaps best remembered for his extraordinary animation of seven skeletons in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963) which took him three months to film.

Harryhausen’s genius was in being able to bring his models alive. Whether they were prehistoric dinosaurs or mythological creatures, in Ray’s hands they were no longer puppets but became instead characters in their own right, just as important as the actors they played against and in most cases even more so.

Today The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a charitable Trust set up by Ray on the 10th April 1986, is devoted to the protection of Ray’s name and body of work as well as archiving, preserving and restoring Ray’s extensive Collection.
Tributes have been heaped upon Harryhausen for his work by his peers in recent years.

“Ray has been a great inspiration to us all in special visual industry. The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much.” “Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no STAR WARS”
George Lucas.
“THE LORD OF THE RINGS is my ‘Ray Harryhausen movie’. Without his life-long love of his wondrous images and storytelling it would never have been made – not by me at least”
Peter Jackson

“In my mind he will always be the king of stop-motion animation”
Nick Park
"His legacy of course is in good hands
Because it’s carried in the DNA of so many film fans."
Randy Cook
"You know I’m always saying to the guys that I work with now on computer graphics “do it like Ray Harryhausen”
Phil Tippett
“What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits.”
Terry Gilliam.
"His patience, his endurance have inspired so many of us."
Peter Jackson
"Ray, your inspiration goes with us forever."
Steven Spielberg
"I think all of us who are practioners in the arts of science fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we’re standing on the shoulders of a giant.
If not for Ray’s contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn’t be who we are."
James Cameron

Los famosos esqueletos de Jason
y los Argonautas. Versión realizada
por mi padre, Miguel Ángel Encinas.

Es posiblemente la noticia más triste de cuantas haya tenido que comentar aquí, y es que para mi Harryhausen representa el sentimiento de amor más puro hacia el cine, pues entronca de manera directa con mi infancia, cuando sentado en el sofa y al abrigo de mi padre veíamos una y otra vez Simbad y la Princesa, Jason y los Argonautas o Furia de Titanes. Más tarde, y gracias a la llegada de internet y los DVD, pude disfrutar del resto de sus largometrajes, cortometrajes y experimentos y pasar a alucinar de forma plena con su obra. Con la creación del blog y mi propósito de aprender más y más sobre la historia del stop-motion mi bilioteca empezó a crecer con libros imprescindibles sobre el master como An Animated Life o The Art of Ray Harryhausen, llegando incluso con motivo del lanzamiento de este volumen a realizarle una entrevista conjunta a Tony Dalton (co-escritor del libro) y al propio Ray. Pero sin duda el momento más mágico fue la jornada de celebración del 90th cumpleaños del maestro en el London Film Museum, donde pude conocerle en persona y darle el DVD con los homenajes realizados por mi gran amigo Jorge Aguirre y por los alumnos de la Escuela de Animación en Plastilina de los Hermanos Lagares.

Foto de ese mítico momento. 29 de Junio de 2010 en el London Film Museum. (Foto de Daniel Encinas)

Hoy me levanto y mi muro de facebook esta lleno de mensajes de agradecimiento al maestro, fotos de ellos junto a Ray e infinidad de detalles que hacen de este momento de tristeza algo muy bonito y esperanzador. Ray Harryhausen ha muerto, larga vida al stop-motion.

María Moreira y Raul Eguía en versión cubio lloran la muerte del maestro.

Homenaje al legado que nos deja el dios Harryhausen. Un trabajo de Edgar Humberto Álvarez.