Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen, who has died aged 92, was an inspirational film-maker who single-handedly created the ground-breaking special effects for a string of cult fantasy films including Jason and the Argonauts, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans.

These days, computer-generated effects have taken over, but Harryhausen's famous sequences of sword-wielding skeletons or Medusa hunting her prey are still stunning pieces of cinema. Directors who cite Harryhausen as an influence include George Lucas, Peter Jackson, James Cameron and Steven Spielberg.

Harryhausen, who was born in Los Angeles, had a fascination with special effects from the moment he saw the original King Kong as a boy in 1933 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Until then, monster effects had been achieved, less than convincingly, by putting men in suits but the young Ray could see that King Kong was different and wanted to know more. "These weren't men in suits," he said, "so how was it done?"

As soon as he got home after seeing the film, the 13-year-old started experimenting and recreated some of the characters from the film using puppets. Desperate to find out how the effects in the film were achieved, he eventually heard about stop-motion animation, the technique of photographing models frame by frame to give the impression they are moving. "I realised this was something I really wanted to try for myself and perhaps even be part of," he said. It was a technique he would use for the rest of his career and take to new, impressive levels.

Harryhausen's first films were made in his parents' garden using a borrowed 16mm Victor camera. About this time he also met the science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury who would become a friend, admirer and collaborator. "He and I made a pact to grow old but never grow up," said Bradbury. "To keep the pterodactyl and the tyrannosaurus forever in our hearts." They would later work on a film together: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in 1952.

Long before that, in the 1930s, Harryhausen started working on an ambitious project called Evolution of the World for which he built a number of model dinosaurs and enrolled in classes in art direction, editing and photography. He started working as an animator and made stop-motion propaganda films during the Second World War.

After the war he began working on his own short films but his major feature film was Mighty Joe Young in 1949. Working as an junior assistant on the film was a dream come true for him because not only did it feature a giant ape, the man in charge of special effects was none other than Willis O'Brien, who created the dinosaurs for King Kong. In 1951 Harryhausen was then offered The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the first film on which he was in charge of special effects.

In the years that followed Harryhausen would perfect the technique he pioneered in that film of using a split screen to insert his models into live-action. It was next seen in It Came From Beneath the Sea in 1955. He was working on a small budget but found ways to economise: the octopus, for example, had six tentacles instead of eight.

Three years later, in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Harryhausen created his most iconic effect of all for the first time: the fighting skeletons. Although he did not direct the film, the central ideas that have lingered in fans' minds for years were all his. The skeletons reappeared in 1963 in Jason and the Argonauts, perhaps Harryhausen's most famous film. It took four months to produce a few minutes on screen.

By now, he was the foremost special-effects man in Hollywood – his hands were said to be insured for $1 million – and throughout the 1960s and 1970s he worked on the films that would make him a legend for science-fiction and fantasy fans – including One Million Years BC, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

His final film, The Clash of the Titans (1981), was the only one with a big budget and a major cast that included Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith and Claire Bloom. In its most famous scene, Perseus battles a stop-motion Medusa. There were many other ideas for films after Clash of the Titans but none of them were ever made.

Harryhausen officially retired in 1984 but occasionally worked on documentary and small film projects. By the 1990s special effects had moved on and computer-generated imagery was prevalent. Harryhausen always remained open-minded about the new technology but thought there would come a day when stop-motion would make a comeback. "After all, Kermit the Frog brought back the hand puppet," he said, "and Thunderbirds brought back the string puppet."

Aardman Animations, who make Wallace and Gromit, did eventually bring stop-motion back to the cinema and the studio's Nick Park was among those who paid tribute to Harryhausen.

However, the great man himself once said of the modern version of stop-motion: "I find it rather amusing to sit through the on-screen credits today, seeing the names of 200 people doing what I once did by myself."

In 1992 Harryhausen received a special award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Of the technique he made so famous, he said: "Stop motion, to me, gives that added value of a dream world."

He is survived by his wife, Diana, a descendant of the missionary David Livingstone, and their daughter Vanessa.