Stan Winston Studio

The CREATURE creators at Stan Winston Studio specialize in Hollywood miracles -- they brought dinosaurs to life for "Jurassic Park" and turned metal men into movie history with "Iron Man" and "The Terminator" -- but their next trick will be their toughest. The illustrious special effects shop will try to hold onto its history even as it sheds its late founder's name and abandons his storied workshop. Stan Winston, the four-time Oscar winner, died in June in Malibu at age 62 after a seven-year battle with cancer.

The CREATURE creators at Stan Winston Studio specialize in Hollywood miracles -- they brought dinosaurs to life for "Jurassic Park" and turned metal men into movie history with "Iron Man" and "The Terminator" -- but their next trick will be their toughest. The illustrious special effects shop will try to hold onto its history even as it sheds its late founder's name and abandons his storied workshop. Stan Winston, the four-time Oscar winner, died in June in Malibu at age 62 after a seven-year battle with cancer.

Stan Winston, the renowned makeup, creature- and visual-effects wizard whose memorable work on "Aliens," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "Jurassic Park" earned him four Academy Awards, has died. He was 62. Winston died of complications from multiple myeloma Sunday at his home in Malibu, said his son, actor Matt Winston. "The entertainment industry has lost a genius and I lost one of my best friends," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, of "Terminator" fame, said in a statement Monday.

Stan Winston, the renowned makeup, creature- and visual-effects wizard whose memorable work on "Aliens," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "Jurassic Park" earned him four Academy Awards, has died. He was 62. Winston died of complications from multiple myeloma Sunday at his home in Malibu, said his son, actor Matt Winston. "The entertainment industry has lost a genius and I lost one of my best friends," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, of "Terminator" fame, said in a statement Monday.

OVER the last 35 years, Stan Winston has helped create some of the most memorable creatures and effects in film and television history. His work as a makeup artist included designing the prostheses that turned Cicely Tyson into the 110-year-old Miss Jane Pittman. Expanding his range and scope, he moved from elaborate prosthetics to creature suits, miniatures, animatronic puppets and computer-generated images.

It had pretty much been all downhill for dinosaur movies since "The Lost World" in 1925 and "King Kong" in 1933. If the mammoth creatures of prehistory could have survived to see the indignity of their portrayal as overgrown lizards in clunker epics like "One Million B.C." and "Journey to the Center of the Earth," they most likely would've gone extinct just from shame. So, to Mesozoic movie buffs, "Jurassic Park" has loomed as the species' filmic salvation.

There are monsters in Van Nuys. Behind the deceptively placid facade of one building in an industrial strip near the airport, there lurk vampires, demons, voracious aliens, killer robots and a host of other nightmarish humanoids. There's also a decidedly nonhuman member of this unfriendly bunch--looming over the rogue's gallery, looking hungriest and angriest of all, is the massive head of a Tyrannosaurus rex. The T.

The 1998 Warner Bros. film "Jack Frost" was in pre-production, and the main character was built--but when director Sam Raimi suddenly left the project, crew members at Jim Henson's Creature Shop here realized their work faced a meltdown. After months of studio indecision, in which the film appeared to be in limbo, the artisans who crafted the snowman's robot head carted it over to the Warner Bros. corporate offices.

Leslie Maskin has joined the TV literary department of United Talent Agency, where she will package TV projects and individually represent writers and producers. Maskin previously worked as vice president of business affairs at NBC, after beginning her career as a program attorney at ABC in 1986. She holds a law degree from Fordham University. Greg Peck is the new vice president of promotion and black music marketing at Qwest Records. He will oversee its urban marketing and promotion efforts.

He appears to be made of metal but there's less substance to Iron Man than meets the eye. Stan Winston Studio built several Iron Man suits for Robert Downey Jr. to don in the superhero movie, but the actor soon realized he didn't have to wear the cumbersome costume at all.

OVER the last 35 years, Stan Winston has helped create some of the most memorable creatures and effects in film and television history. His work as a makeup artist included designing the prostheses that turned Cicely Tyson into the 110-year-old Miss Jane Pittman. Expanding his range and scope, he moved from elaborate prosthetics to creature suits, miniatures, animatronic puppets and computer-generated images.

The 1998 Warner Bros. film "Jack Frost" was in pre-production, and the main character was built--but when director Sam Raimi suddenly left the project, crew members at Jim Henson's Creature Shop here realized their work faced a meltdown. After months of studio indecision, in which the film appeared to be in limbo, the artisans who crafted the snowman's robot head carted it over to the Warner Bros. corporate offices.

There are monsters in Van Nuys. Behind the deceptively placid facade of one building in an industrial strip near the airport, there lurk vampires, demons, voracious aliens, killer robots and a host of other nightmarish humanoids. There's also a decidedly nonhuman member of this unfriendly bunch--looming over the rogue's gallery, looking hungriest and angriest of all, is the massive head of a Tyrannosaurus rex. The T.

It had pretty much been all downhill for dinosaur movies since "The Lost World" in 1925 and "King Kong" in 1933. If the mammoth creatures of prehistory could have survived to see the indignity of their portrayal as overgrown lizards in clunker epics like "One Million B.C." and "Journey to the Center of the Earth," they most likely would've gone extinct just from shame. So, to Mesozoic movie buffs, "Jurassic Park" has loomed as the species' filmic salvation.

Special effects makeup artist and animatronics effects supervisor Shane Mahan has had monsters on the brain since he was a youngster growing up in Michigan. "My story is not dissimilar to most of my colleagues," says Mahan, who earned an Oscar nomination for "Iron Man. " "We grew up in the 1960s and early '70s where the only way you could see monster movies was to stay up late. Today kids can just Netflix the movies. There's no challenge of the quest anymore. It used to take real effort to stay up to 2 in the morning to watch 'Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Rules, rules, rules -- they are the undoing of so many genre films. From time-travel pictures to vampire flicks to werewolf movies, whenever filmmakers get bogged down explaining the parameters by which their characters must live and die, the result is usually a morass of confusion and contradictions.