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Special Effects Wizard Stan Winston Dead At 62

Posted by kdawson on from the terminator-scissorhands dept.

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."

3 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Remembered like Mel Blanc? by mykepredko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  2. The films he worked on by dunezone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. "Aliens" is the first movie mentioned by jamrock · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "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.