Dinosaurs and Things

Those “things” being spiders, serpents, pre-historic monsters and God. Stop-motion clay animation inspired by the work of Ray Harryhausen.

This showreel of animation illustrates the scope of filmmaker Jon Coley’s stop-motion technique, and was used to show to film companies in the hope of gaining further work. Sequences include “Sacrifice to the Great God ‘Moore’”, “Attack of the Serpent” (which features a part-live-action sequence with the filmmaker), and “In the Shadow of Punchinello”. Coley worked on these sequences under the supervision of the legendary fantasy animation filmmaker Ray Harryhausen.

Jon Coley garnered much attention when in 1976, BBC East produced a short documentary about him, titled “The Boy Who Makes Monster Films”. Coley was 17 years old, however, his fascination with monster films started much earlier. Coley remembers, aged just three he was introduced to the work of Ray Harryhausen after watching an excerpt on TV from the 1953 film “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”. He was hooked, and began to make his own models of dinosaurs using plasticine clay. Coley has devoted a lifetime to animation and filmmaking. Spanning a 40+ year period he has produced over 7000 feet of original footage, working with Super 8 colour Kodachrome and 16mm film, and utilising more than one hundred model figures.