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Special Effects Wizard Stan Winston Dead At 62
Dusty101 writes "Special effects maestro Stan Winston has died at the age of 62. Winston was responsible for many of the physical special effects in films such as The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands, and Iron Man. Winston died on Sunday, June 15, 2008, after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma."
... that's just a special effect.
:(
Right?
...Just terminated.
... of making such a good dinosaur he can actually eat you.
The man was truly gifted at his profession, one movie not mentioned and among my all time favorites is "Aliens" the James Cameron follow up to Alien.
The world will miss his genius.
I think somewhere Leonardo is crying.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Chances are he probably died from an infection(not actually the cancer). Multiple myeloma in late stages heavily suppress all bone marrow tissue(that means your red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.) People with Multiple myeloma over-produc non-functional antibody side chains from malignant plasma cells. This impairs immune response and causes renal failure, making them extra susceptible to infections(more so than other cancers).
It's Myeloma Awareness week 21st-28th June. Perhaps his death can help increase awareness of Myeloma, or perhaps just help increase DVD sales!
ouch, sorry, I think I grammared my damage.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Here's to the guy who scared the crap out of me while simultaneously inspiring me in so many ways as a child.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Now his mechanical Terminator will never be built and Cyberdyne systems will never take over the world. Sarah, please take care of George Lucas while you are at it.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
He was just taken to the future by a T-800.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Goodbye and good travels. While none of us are destined to live forever, his work certainly will come close.
When I was a teenager, I had gotten into film quite a bit, and moreso I was headed towards the special effects industry. Stan was always a bit of a hero to me and I'm very sorry to see him go.
i am very disapointed by the lack of tact in a lot of these posts. I know this is slashdot, but a man died after fighting with a killer for 7 long years. if you are going to make a crude comment here, at least make it +5 funny, not the -1 stupid i have been seeing so far.
Stan, you will be missed.
Your skill and imagination were an inspiration to me through the years.
-I only code in BASIC.-
GETTING OLD SUCKS!!!!
RIP bro, your magic will live on...
I had just watched Aliens over the weekend after not having seen it for awhile (and recently suffering though the AVP:R). It was amazing at how much better the movie was since it didn't dump crappy CGI monsters into it. The Winston team worked hard to make realistic looking Aliens, not to mention all the models and the lifesize stuff like the load-lifter and the queen....*sigh*
I remember a cel coming out after Mel Blanc's death of a single microphone with many of the characters he voiced standing around mourning him.
Maybe something similar could be done for Winston.
From everything I've read about him, he was somebody that was generous, helpful and incredibly creative.
He will be missed,
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I worked in visual and make up effects for 25 years before I moved on. I knew Stan somewhat but what's scary is of the people I know 62 is a ripe old age to die at in the effects industry. Of the people I've known well and close friends most haven't made it out of their early 50s and I've known people that died as young as 28 and large numbers in their 30s and 40s. Most were from cancer, heart, liver damage or related diseases. Skin cancer is a rarer one for effects people because of long hours in dark shops but you can also be stuck out in the sun from dawn to dark day after day so I'm sure that's what got him from being on set. Hardly the only profession with that but it's the chemical exposure that adds to conditions like that. Bad food, long hours and stress are also contributing factors. Other careers are famous for danger but old school effects people tend to go more quietly unless they die in an accident on set, I've known several people that died that way. If you add in death by job related illness it's probably among the worst and it's not considered by most to be that dangerous. Most effects work is on computer these days so the risk is fading but for my generation back through Stan's it's been a rough way to make a living. All the great effects films of the past came at a price and not always from dead stuntmen, I've known a few of those that didn't make it as well.
Your death can be reasonably symbolized by a red light flickering out in a velociraptor's eye.
Thanks for the magic.Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I grew up completely immmersed in film and the worlds that Stan created. His contributions were always the most spectacular and most awe inspiring special effects work committed to celluloid bar none. Probably the greatest innovator in the field since Ray Harryhausen, he will be sorely missed.
R.I.P Stan
Stan did some cool stuff.
It's a great loss for the entertainment industry.
On a lighter note...
from wikipedia:
"In 1983, Winston designed the Mr. Roboto facemask for the American rock group Styx"
I wish I could say I designed the mask for Mr. Roboto.
Ed
-
Cub fans... This is the year! http://www.100yearsorbust.com
--Ed-- - Cub fans... This is the year! http://www.100yearsorbust.com
I am very sorry that Stan Winston has passed away.
He won an Academy Award for Aliens in 1986.
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I told my friends about Stan yesterday. And my friends are big sci-fi people. They had no clue who this man was, nor did they care. But the thing was, once I told them what movies he worked on, what creatures he created, they were amazed.
Before CGI, this was the guy to go to for special effects and creature creation. In my opinion, he had the privilege to live the high point of traditional movie special effects, and had the honor of working on the film that ushered in CGI(Jurassic Park). And the thing about Jurassic Park, this movie combined both the classic approach and a modern approach seamlessly.
Watching the interview on the JP DVD you can tell how excited he was to work on that project. The time he took with ILM to make sure a shot that had the actual built dinosaur and the CGI created worked seamlessly, shot to shot. To this day I load up the T-Rex attack scene and ask people to pull out the CGI shot and the non-CGI shot. Barely anyone can tell difference. Yet, I load up "i-Robot" and people just laugh at the compositing.
Last week I watched "Aliens", first time I have ever seen the film. I was blown away. The detailed model work was amazing. This was all pre-cgi also. The thing with Stan Winston, he knew CGI was the new hollywood tool, but just like Phil Tippett, he also knew his skills were not gone. There was still room for traditional effects.
He will be missed, and as more and more films use less and less traditional special effects. You can always look back and watch films like Aliens, Predator, Terminator, and tell your kids this is how they did it before we had computers. And one of the masters of the pre-computer era was Stan Winston.
"Aliens", for which Stan won his first Oscar, is the first movie mentioned in the first sentence of the Wired article linked to in the summary. All the other news sources I've read, BBC News, Los Angeles Times, NY Times et al, mention "Aliens" prominently. And you've got good taste: "Aliens" is also among my all time favorite films. I'm deeply saddened by his passing. I remember seeing an interview with him about 10 years ago, during which he took the interviewer on a tour of his vast workshops, and apart from the fascinating and voluminous collection stored there, the thing that struck me most about Stan was his incredibly playful sense of humor. I laughed out loud at his clowning around, and couldn't help thinking that he would have been a great deal of fun to work with. He will be sorely missed.
I'm sure his imagination and labor has single-handedly contributed at least several percentage points to the GDP of the United States from Hollywood exports.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Are they sure he didn't mutter "I'll be back"?
Wait, Ray Harryhausen is still ALIVE?!?!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He made Cicely Tyson look 110 in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
He was the 80's equivalent of the modern celebrity CEO. People devowered the stories of how the latest effects shot was done & Stan was always at the cutting edge. The technology was always changing. Every effects shot required a unique solution. Individual creativity made a big difference back then. Today the same shots would involve hiring thousands of Maya artists & following a standard procedure.
RIP Stan
Ray Harryhausen is still very much alive. He will celebrate his 88th birthday in a couple of weeks (June 29). Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Harryhausen.
For someone I never met, and who I only know through his work and interviews, I'm shocked by how upset I am by this. I found out this morning, and in the few minutes it took me to make a quick blog post about it I was in tears.
Since I was a kid Winston's work has been the inspiration for more wild dreams and terrifying nightmares than I could ever recount, and I've loved all of it. Between the Alien queen and Terminator endoskeletons I have more representations of Winston's work in my cube at work than I do pictures of my own wife, and my home is like a shrine to the Terminator franchise. Schwarzenegger may have played terminators, but it was Winston and his team who built them and brought them to life.
Oh yes, I am obsessive. I have a Terminator 2 arcade machine in my front room, and in the time that I've owned it not a single day has gone by that I haven't played. Today it will remain powered off.
The world has lost a master artisan, and is a less colorful place as a result.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I think Stan worked on the first couple Batman films (1989, 1992), my teen-years favorites. He will be missed.
Always someone has power over you. The thing to consider is this: Is the power good, or bad?
The saddest part of the deaths of recent people from Tim Russet to Cyd Charisse is that they were entirely unnecessary. We have the cryonics preservation technology to ensure that although they may be dead from a technical standpoint -- viewing them as permanently dead is open to question. We need a restructuring of how we think about "death" and it probably requires re-educating every physician in the country.
You are not "dead" until all the information in your body has been converted to an unrecoverable state.
I loved the fact that whenever I saw Stan Winston's name in the opening credits of a movie, I would know that no matter how lame the movie turned out to be, there was always going to be some kind of cool monster/robot creation. I guess that won't be happening anymore.