Visual effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen passed away today at 92, the Harryhausen Family announced today on the Facebook page of the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation.

Harryhausen had a huge influence on modern science fiction and fantasy filmmakers, from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Terry Gilliam, Peter Jackson and James Cameron.  "Ray has been a great inspiration to us all in special visual industry," Lucas said in a statement posted on the Foundation facebook page.  "The art of his earlier films, which most of us grew up on, inspired us so much. Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars."

Known for his work on B-movie genre titles such as Mighty Joe Young, (1949), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), the Sinbad movies (1958) (1974) (1977) and Clash of the Titans (1981),  Harryhausen is probably best remembered for his animated skeleton battle in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

Harryhausen’s fascination with animated models first began when he saw Willis O’Brien’s creations in King Kong (1933) with his boyhood friend, the author Ray Bradbury.  He made his first foray into filmmaking in 1935 with home movies that featured his youthful attempts at model animation.  For the next 46 years he worked in the movie industry in animation, visual effects and production.

He was honored in 1992 by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences with an honorary Oscar, the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, which is given to an individual "whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry."  He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and received the British Fantasy Society’s Wagner Award in 2008.