The Seventh Voyage
A Journey into the imagination and world of Ray Harryhausen.
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More on the Sabre Tooth-Tiger
""In my original concept for the steps I had included four different creatures at the four corners representing the four elements-earth, fire, air and water. Somehow this ideal was lost during script developments and we ended up with only one guardian: the Tiger."
Sabre-Tooth Tiger
Creator: Ray Harryhausen
Film: Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger 1977
*Click on the images to see a larger version*
With their enormous, deadly sharp canines,
sabre-toothed carnivores are well known to many people as
frightening and
ferocious predators of the Cenozoic era. When Kassim is turned back to his
human form Zenobia sees Rafi dead at the foot of the stairs with a broken
neck, this infuriates her she uses her magic to invade the body of a
Saber-Tooth tiger frozen in ice.
The Tiger attacks Sinbad and the rest as
the Shrine falls apart, but Trog did not forget his friends and challenges
the Tiger to a fight. The sequence between these two is awesome!
back and
forth they went until the Tiger was too much for Trog and kills him. After
Trog falls to the floor dead, the tiger turns his attention to Sinbad. The
other two crew members try to fend off the Tiger but with one swipe from his
claws he sends them flying!
Sinbad grabs the spear that Trog dropped
when he died, with spear in his hand the Tiger
launches
towards him but Sinbad impales him with it and the Tiger falls to the floor
and finally dies.
Miniature
The Sabre-Tooth Tiger is available as a chess piece, he is about 4" tall and comes fully painted made out of resin. No other versions of this miniature exist as far as I know, if anything new comes out it will be posted here.
Sabre-Tooth Tiger Facts
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It was difficult for Mr. Harryhausen to animate the tiger mostly because of the way big cats move, their slow sprint was difficult to re-create.
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The fur was also something that gave him problems if he ruffled the fur in the wrong way or location the camera would capture it, but in the end it showed the very talent that this amazing animator had.
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To incase the tiger in what looked like ice, Ray Harryhausen covered it in cellophane then sprayed it, as the tiger freed himself he used sections of clear acrylic resin that had to be individually animated on wires to seem as if they were falling away.
This website exists to celebrate and increase appreciation of the work of Mr Ray Harryhausen in stop motion animation and cinema history and to encourage people to relive these classic films once more. No copyright infringement is intended. Site design and content are copyrighted by theseventhvoyage.com.
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"I studied domestic cats, and by so doing managed to achieve a combination of mannerisms represented by both. The overall impression is of latent ferocity and a lust of blood, but at the same time there are also, graceful movements that pmask the creature's power."
"The model tiger was designed to reveal its savage musculature power, and was a combination of a living tiger and the sabre-tooth tiger as painted by Charles Knight."
Miniature
Sabre Tooth-Tiger Chess Piece