Chapter 7 Animate Monsters Willis O'Brien Willis O'Brien was born in 1886 and is considered the founding genius behind the art of combining stop motion animation with live action to create a specialized visual effects technique that has blossomed into today's computer graphic spectaculars. O'Brien had a colorful past of being, among other things, a cowboy, a trapper, a boxer, and a cartoonist. While working at a decorator shop specializing in marble, O'Brien engaged the assistance of a newsreel photographer and shot a brief animation of a clay dinosaur and caveman modeled over wooden skeletons. This early test was crude, but the unique illusion of life impressed a San Francisco producer enough to invest $5000 in O'Brien to create The Dinosaur and the Missing Link in 1915. With this film O'Brien made vast improvements to his technique by creating far sturdier metal jointed skeletons covered with more workable and resilient rubber sheeting. The success of this film and others led O'Brien to be hired by the Edison Company to make animation films in 1916, and he was paid $1 per foot for 16