Charcoal and pencil on paper

Bonus text
Like his mentor Willis O’Brien, Harryhausen felt that dinosaurs were the best subject for stop-motion animation. Part of this stemmed from the knowledge that audiences did not really know how dinosaurs moved and that this gave the animator more freedom to create believable creatures. That is not to say that Harryhausen did not research his creations. He was passionately interested in dinosaurs and palaeontology and would spend many hours in the National History Museum of Los Angeles County.

One of the main attractions of the museum for the young Harryhausen was a mural depicting a prehistoric scene at the La Brea tar pits. These pits were a rich resource for palaeontologists due to the vast number of animals that had become trapped and subsequently preserved there. The mural was the work of artist Charles R. Knight (1874 – 1953), who became a great inspiration for Harryhausen. Like Harryhausen, Knight sought to bring long extinct creatures back to life in the imagination of new audiences. His drawings and paintings were the result of a collaboration with his friend, Professor Henry Fairfeild Osbourn, who held a senior position at the museum. Interestingly, Knight would often sculpt models of his subjects before rendering them in his drawings and this process can only have endeared him further to the young Harryhausen.

© The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation.