Willis Harold O’Brien (1886-1962)
Was an American stop motion and motion picture special effects pioneer. He is best known for his work on King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949) for which he went on to win Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1950. From a young age he spent his spare time illustrating and sculpting, which led to his first job as a draftsman in an architects office, and then as a sports cartoonist for The San Francisco News. He then went on to work for the railroad, and this is where he was spotted by exhibitor Herman Wobber, who saw hi dinosaur and caveman models, which made an animated short film with. Wobber saw this and commissioned him to make his first film- ‘The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy’ in (1915) with a budget of $5,000.
Thomas Edison saw this film and was very impressed with his work, so much so that he hired him to animate a series of short films based on prehistoric story lines. Also during this time, he went to work on films such as ‘The Puzzling Billboard’ this was one of the first films to include live action, and actors and stop motion models. After this O’Brien, then went to work on King Kong (1933) using his models of a gorilla and dinosaur. This film would be he most recognizable film and has also been remade twice, once in 1976 and again in 2005
The Past and Present of Stop Motion Animation 