The task of instilling pathos into a creature that was, after all, an innocent victim of circumstances was something I had set myself from the outset… - Ray Harryhausen

I am often asked if I would have liked to have been involved with Jurassic Park. The plain answer is no. Although excellent, it is not with all its dollars what I would have wished to do with my career. I was always a loner and worked best that way. Since the very beginning I fought and struggled under constant pressure to keep the design and final result within my hands. As time moved on this became more difficult, until I was forced to bow to the fact that my method of working, in the financial sense, was no longer practical. Model animation has been relegated to a reflection, or a starting point for creature computer effects that has reached a high few could have anticipated. However, for all the wonderful achievements of the computer, the process creates creatures that are too realistic and for me that makes them unreal because they have lost one vital element - a dream quality. Fantasy, for me, is realizing strange beings that are so removed from the 21st century. These beings would include not only dinosaurs, because no matter what the scientists say, we still don't know how dinosaurs looked or moved, but also creatures of the mind. Fantastical creatures where the unreal quality becomes even more vital. Stop-motion supplies the perfect breath of life for them, offering a look of pure fantasy because their movements are beyond anything we know.

We don't set out to deliberately scare with our creatures, we try to make them as awe-inspiring as possible.

[The skeleton] in Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was more frightening than the seven in Jason and the Argonauts. [...] Because we had seven skeletons I thought we were going to get seven "X" certificates but we got a "U" instantly. But one skeleton on its own is possibly more frightening than seven, and also in Seventh Voyage the skeleton was in a dark, spooky chamber, while in Jason the seven were out in the open on a sunny hilltop.