JOE: I really enjoy the way Stan allowed me to interpret his creations in my own unique way. No creature is a better example of this, than his large carrion birds, called harpies. They have little in common with the Harpies from greek myth, but are instead more reminiscent of a pterodactyl. My love of cutting and pasting different animals together is most apparent here.
JOE: My first instinct was to look at the harpy's namesake, and if you are familiar with the South American eagle that bears the same name, you can see why I looked at if for inspiration. The harpy eagle is a fierce raptor with enormous talons capable of snatching monkeys, sloths and other large prey from the treetops. This was a good jumping of point.
JOE: Next instead of looking at prehistoric flying reptiles, I looked towards the ground at the extinct and flightless Titanis Walleri, often referred to as the Terror Bird.
STAN: I quite like the way Joe's given a kind of velociraptor aspect to the harpies. I guess that if I had any sort of mental picture of harpies it was something along the lines of the more humanoid version in Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts, a movie which made a strong impression on me when I was a kid. Much as I admire Harryhausen, I think Joe's interpretation is more imaginative.
JOE: I'm not surprised that Stan mentioned velociraptors, both the book and the film, Jurassic Park were a huge influence on me. Unfortunately I did not learn of the wonder that is Ray Harryhausen until I was an adult. From what I've heard his films were played constantly on Saturday afternoons, about 10 years before I was born. Way to drop the ball local TV affiliates.
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