This year Ray Harryhausen will celebrate his 90th birthday and I'm hoping we can do something really special! When I learned that Ray would be turning 90 this year, I made a suggestion on StopMotionAnimation.com that maybe we should celebrate by shooting stop motion video birthday cards for him. Our friend Nick Hilligoss was already in the middle of shooting a short with that same theme for Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine Online and I'm already working on 'Sinbad The 5th Voyage' but, I still felt that wasn't quite enough.
After I made that suggestion, a lot of animators agreed that the idea had merit and we really should go for it. I blathered on about the idea for a while hoping that it would become something worth collecting on a disk and shipping it to Ray himself. Well as it turns out, it got a lot more attention than that, the idea has ballooned and I'm happy to report that AnimateClay.com and Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine Online have both taken up the concept and expanded it into something that amounts to a REAL TRIBUTE!
Plans are still being hashed out but, Ray's business partner has now officially given his blessing to this and Ray will indeed see whatever we turn out AND there are plans being hatched for this to be something that can truly be called an 'event'.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been contacting as many stop motion animators that I have email addresses for and asking for their participation in this tribute and I'm happy to say that there have been a good number of those who have signed on to shooting a 'card' for Ray's birthday. I will be shooting my own short for this and I hope you will too!
So if you have the time, Please consider shooting something? There really are no strict rules for this other than the following... it needs to be shot in either puppet or clay animation and it must be 'family friendly'. (no gore or otherwise offensive content) Other than that, it can be as long or short, simple or complex as you can afford the time to do... it just needs to honor the life and career of Ray Harryhausen and/or wish him a Happy Birthday!
Further details about how this will be collected and shown are developing currently and I will post future updates as they unfold. But I want to get the word out to as many stop motion animators as possible as soon as possible. Ray's birthday is coming up on June 29th and I suspect that anyone who intends to shoot a 'card' for this event would need to plan to have it finished at least a month in advance of that date.
Ray Harryhausen is in my opinion, THE KING of stop motion animation and more than deserves his 90th birthday to be a massive showing of THANKS for all the years of entertainment and advancements to the craft which he alone mastered for millions of fans.
More To Come...
