Modern Mages: Harry Walton

Posted by Steve in Interviews, Latest News, The Magic Lantern - Steve Weintz on December 16th, 2009

When we contacted Harry Walton and requested an interview, his reply was simple and immediate: “Sure! I grew up on Famous Monsters.  When do you want to talk?”  Nothing keeps us more enthused about our mission than speaking with the fanboys and –girls who grew up to become the modern mages of today’s visual effects.

Harry's buddy Rick Baker in his Frankenstein mask, West Covina, CA, 1968

Harry’s enthusiasm goes way back and deep; during our interview we spent a long time lost amongst his many scrapbooks of personal photos.  A few of these may be seen on Harry’s own website.  (All photos in this interview are from the Harry Walton Collection, (c) VFXmasters.)

Top Row: Davey & Goliath, Harry running an optical printer, "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids". Middle Row: the Pillsbury Doughboy, "The Golden Child," "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Bottom Row: "Land of the Lost", "RoboCop2", "James & The Giant Peach".

From a start at Gumby’s home, Clokey Productions, Harry moved on to Excelsior!, Cascade Pictures, CPC, Coast Effects, Tippett Studios, and his own effects firm.  Over the last 40 years he’s worked on a tremendous variety  of films and commercials, bringing to life everything from the Purina chuck wagon to the original Land of the Lost, from the Pillsbury Doughboy to The Golden Child and RoboCop.  The Nightmare Before Christmas called on his traditional animation skills; later, after making the jump to digital effects, he oversaw the digital animation for the shark attack sequence for James And The Giant Peach and several videogame animations and characters.

FM: Please talk about your connections to Famous Monsters and Forrest J Ackerman.

HW: Well, I had no personal connections to Forrest, but I met him a few times.  I have a hat from his 60th birthday party – that was a blast.  However,  Famous Monsters was a huge influence.  Around 1958, when I was eight or nine years old, I walked in to a downtown drugstore in Hicksville, Long Island [seriously] , where I bought my comics, and Famous Monsters #1 was there on the rack.

I flipped on it – it was the first of its kind  — and I finally had something to look at that told me what stuff was done and how it was done.  It gave me a shot in the arm to my ambitions and imagination.  I eventually collected the first forty or fifty issues; they got pretty ratty-looking after years of reading and storage, and I finally gave them to Bob Burns.

Funny thing, at Sony Imageworks one day I happened to look over the shoulder of a young effects artist, and saw him buying an original Famous Monsters magazine on eBay.  It was the first I heard of the company, and the first thing I bought on eBay was an old FM issue!

FM: What were and are your major artistic influences?

HW: In filmmaking?  Well, Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen, of course, but Gene Warren and Jim Danforth were really my mentors, in stop-motion, matte painting and filmmaking.  I got to work with Tex Avery at CPC and he was a wonder; I worked on George Pal’s last Puppetoon, a cute story about animated tools, at Gene Warren’s studio Excelsior!.

Pete Ellenshaw and other matte artists were big influences, and from them I grew to appreciate the Impressionists.  They were the first to grasp the importance of how light is perceived, and to show how quick and rough brushwork could evoke a place and time so clearly.  Traditional matte painting was very loose; I once examined one of Pete Ellenshaw’s mattes and was stunned by how loose and sketchy it was, yet when you stood back and squinted it suddenly popped with realism.  The film resolution back then didn’t capture as much detail as today’s photography, and added to the leeway the great matte painters enjoyed.

FM: What are you into these days?

HW: I’m getting back into fine art; again, Jim Danforth was my inspiration.  Jim has two storage sheds full of his paintings, and another two rooms in his house full of more.  I’m not nearly that prolific!

I paint mostly landscapes and seascapes but I have painted several portraits of dogs, including one of Vin Diesel’s dog Roman.  One recent painting is of Paradise Falls, a favorite hiking spot of ours in Thousand Oaks, California.  Since 1978 I’ve worked mostly as an animation supervisor, but I still get to animate occasionally.  I switched to CGI some years ago and use Maya for animation and Photoshop for matte painting.  Until recently I was the animation director at Brain Zoo Studios, and now I’m involved with a small start-up company called DOE (Day Of Evil Productions).

FM: What interests you today in VFX and sci-fi/fantasy/horror filmmaking?

HW: You may not like my answer, but I don’t like most of today’s digital effects; they’re too clean, too calculated, too much, and they’re no longer amazing.  The only things I really care about are good characters and a good story, and the visual effects have to move the story.

Even with the traditional pre-digital effects, some techniques worked better than others. “Dynamation”, the rear-projection/front-projection/matte process that Ray Harryhausen developed and Jim Danforth and others perfected, could beat the best blue-screen compositing in speed and quality, if handled correctly.

Stop-Motion and Rear Projection on "Willow" (1985)

On Willow ILM used blue-screen compositing for scenes where Val Kilmer’s character fights a two-headed dragon. Dennis Muren  allowed a small team of us to try to get some of those shots using the Dynamation method.  It worked – we got each of our shots done in five days, versus four weeks for each composite in the optical department — and George Lucas was happy.  We used 35mm VistaVision plates and composited down to 4 perf 35mm format using anamorphic lenses, and the finished comps looked great.

FM: If you could resurrect or finish a lost film or TV project, which one would it be?

HW: It would probably be Tom Scherman’s Discovery Bay Chronicles.  Tom was an incredible miniature maker, sadly no longer among us, who dreamed up a TV concept based upon Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo.  Discovery Bay was to be Nemo’s home base, from where he and his submarine would sail off to various “steampunk” adventures.  He tried to interest Disney in the idea, and worked with the legendary Harper Goff, who designed the “Nautilus” for Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, in developing the Discovery Bay version.  Tom even got access to Goff’s original blueprints!

Tom Scherman, Harry Walton and the "Nautilus" (1983)

I was at Coast Effects when Tom asked me to assist him, and we wound up shooting some really good demo footage. The story was great and the production design was fantastic.  There was a high-speed slow-motion shot in a water tank of the submarine surfacing, and three or four matte shots of a cityscape, a boathouse and some airships. Yeah, it would be cool to see Discovery Bay made.

FM: Thank you so much, Harry, it’s been a joy to speak with you!

HW: Thank you and good luck!  I’m so pleased to see Famous Monsters back again!