Cyclops, Martians and Myths: the art of Ray Harryhausen – in pictures

A free exhibition at Waterside’s Lauriston Gallery in Sale, Greater Manchester, examines the workings of Ray Harryhausen, one of the greatest animators in cinema history. Inspired by film-maker John Walsh’s book Harryhausen: The Lost Movies, it opens on 26 October

The Cyclops from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958 is one of fantasy cinema’s most iconic creations. This key drawing shows Ray Harryhausen’s original plan to showcase a fight between two Cyclops, as they battle next to the captured sailors from Sinbad’s crew. It was dropped from the final film, possibly due to time and budgetary constraints.All Photographs: Andy Johnson/© The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation

A sketch from Force of the Trojans, the unrealised follow-up to Clash of the Titans. The drawing portrays the Charybdis, ‘a monstrous mutation of octopus, triton and sea serpent’, one of a plethora of mythical characters mooted for the film. The project struggled to gain financial backing, and Harryhausen retired in the early 1980s

The War of the Worlds is possibly the ‘lost’ Harryhausen project with the most comprehensive collection of artwork and artefacts, work having begun as early as 1942. This armatured model was created by Harryhausen and his father for a 16mm colour test, which showed the creature emerging from its crashed spaceship, before falling out of the side. Sadly, another project that didn’t gain funding

This sketch was initially envisaged for Jason and the Argonauts in 1963, and influenced heavily by Gustave Doré. Harryhausen believed that the original myth of Children of the Hydra’s Teeth, which depicted rotten corpses rising from the grave, may have resulted in the film getting a higher rating, and instead the scene depicted skeletons

Baron Munchausen standing on a lunar landscape looking at a silhouette of the Earth, in Ray Harryhausen’s proposed adaptation of the classic Rudolf Erich Raspe tale. A rare oil painting by Ray Harryhausen, who usually preferred charcoal and pencil drawings

A model from The Evolution of the World, a stop motion short from 1940. It features this mammoth, with tusks made from carved wood and painted to look like ivory, and fur made from Siberian goats’ hair. This well-preserved model is from c1938, Harryhausen’s early career

Artwork for The Jupiterian, which was created by Harryhausen, age 17, showing his artistic skills and imagination. He was later critical of the design for this creature, describing it as overly grotesque and disproportionate

An unused sequence from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, where the Cyclops prepares to battle a giant serpent, as the two fight over Sinbad and his sailors. It was perhaps vetoed by the producer, Charles Schneer, who had a fear of snakes. Harryhausen appreciated the fluidity afforded by animating snakes, as seen in the Snakewoman sequence from this film, and Medusa in Clash of the Titans in 1981

This is a sketch for People of the Mist, another unmade project based on a story by H Rider Haggard. The rights to the story were purchased by director Michael Winner, who was a neighbour of Ray’s, and the two worked together on various script rewrites throughout the 1980s