I can see Harryhausen’s point of view once I appreciated how difficult it was to combine live action with stop motion work. First of all the actors line of sight have to match what they are looking at. Ray did a really good job of that (I’ve seen many animation/live action scenes where they did a poor job) and the only real improvement I’ve seen since Ray left the business is they use ping pong balls on sticks for the actors to look at (like they did in Dragonheart) and then cover the balls in post-production with CGI or animation.

Another, much more difficult, technique you have to perfect in matching live action and animation is getting the color and lighting to match. Ray was an expert in that field and most of his scenes are seamless: no discernible difference in the lighting of the live action actors and the clay models. Nowadays it’s difficult to see any differences but in the early days of CGI you could easily see the differences.

I’m sure stop motion with live action still has a place in the modern movie industry, it’s just sad to see that Ray Harryhausen will not play a part in it.

Looking at Harryhausen’s work is a reminder of why quite a few people regard CGI as “cheating.”