Stan Winston

By RICHARD CORLISS

When a prime movie monster--the T. rex from Jurassic Park or the big angry mama in Aliens or the Schwarzeneggerian exoskeletons in the Terminator movies--pops onto screen, a kid's first thrilled reaction may be, "Where did that come from?"

All these creatures and many other spectacular cinematic beasties sprang from the fertile mind and animating fingers of Stan Winston, dead at 62 after a long bout with multiple myeloma.

A master of the old-fashioned technique of special-effects makeup--in which spirit gum, plaster casts and armor work, not computer fiddling, do the trick--Winston wanted more than audiences' screams. Often he earned their sympathy, as in the baleful, soulful face and kitchen-cutlery fingers of Edward Scissorhands and the mandroid smoothness of the robo-gigolo in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. "I don't do special effects," Winston said. "I do characters."

He made artful alliances with directors of equally robust creativity: Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron (with whom he was working on next year's Avatar). Winston's last handmade triumph was the metal suit that industrialist Tony Stark forges in Iron Man. The hard work and ingenuity Stark lavishes on his titanium tuxedo were worthy of Stan the Man himself.