LUCIDMEDIA

…These are a few of the characters that Stan Winston helped give life to throughout his Hollywood career as an A-list special effects and make-up man. If you’ve seen a blockbuster movie in the last 20 years than you’ve inexorably felt the influence of this man who won four Oscars for Visual Effects and Make-Up and was nominated for six more.

It was announced Monday that Winston passed away Sunday evening after a seven year fight with multiple myeloma, a type of bone marrow cancer. A spokeswoman reported that “Stan died peacefully at home surrounded by family.”

The news spread silently across filmdom Monday. One of the first to react to Winston’s death was colleague Phil Tippett, who shared credit, and an Oscar, for Visual Effects on Jurassic Park with Winston. “Stan contributed to some of the greatest -- fantastic movie characters in motion picture history,” Tippett said. “His loss is a great one and he will be missed.”

Winston began his career at Walt Disney, working as a make-up apprentice. In 1972 he started his own company which grew and prospered leading up to his first Oscar win for the film Heartbeeps, which starred Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters as Robots that fall in love. Ever since, Winston has never been at a loss for work, contributing to the make-up or effects departments of over 75 films. And at the time of his death he was working on four different films including the upcoming Terminator 4 and James Cameron’s Avatar.

“For Stan, the measure of his work was never in the techniques and technology employed and pioneered at his studio,” said Don Shay, publisher of Cinefex Magazine, to a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.