Willis O'Brien and King Kong

There are several films that pushed the boundaries of what could be done with Stop Motion animation. The first one I’m going to mention is the original King Kong, the one that was released in 1933. This film revolutionised stop motion in many ways. Up until this point, most of the stop motion stuff that had been done was small scale, however this film featured many fight scenes between several stop motion figures, including the great ape, King Kong, as well as a variety of dinosaurs including a tyrannosaurus rex, a triceratops and a pteranodon.  There was also a giant 7 foot head of King Kong used for various scenes. Although the entire film wasn’t done in stop motion, it did use it for many scenes.

The fight scenes in this film showed how realistic stop motion could look. Although it had nothing on the CGI effects of today, it looked far more impressive than guys in costumes fighting each other, so it showed how useful stop motion could be for creating awesome scenes in films.

The stop motion in King Kong was done by Willis O’Brien, who is considered to be a legendary animator in the world of stop motion. His legacy began with the movie The Lost World, which used stop motion dinosaurs much like King Kong. In fact King Kong borrowed a lot of elements from The Lost World, including the set. Many consider The Lost World to be where O’Brien perfected the stop motion techniques he used in King Kong.

After King Kong, another film that O’Brien worked on was Mighty Joe Young, another film featuring a giant gorilla. This film was considered a step up from King Kong in terms of the stop motion effect used in it. The body motions on the stop motion characters were more fluent and realistic, this could be considered O‘Brien’s greatest work in terms of his stop motion effects, although King Kong is undoubtedly the most famous film he worked on. O’ Brien was one of the greatest stop motion animators of his time, and his stop motion creatures are legendary in the world of film.