Ray Harryhausen, the animator and special-effects wizard who found ways to breathe cinematic life into the gargantuan, the mythical and the extinct, died on Tuesday in London. He was 92 and lived in London.

His family announced his death.

Often working alone or with a small crew, Mr. Harryhausen created and photographed many of the most memorable fantasy-adventure sequences in movie history: the atomically awakened dinosaur that lays waste to Coney Island in “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”; the sword fight between Greek heroes and skeleton warriors in “Jason and the Argonauts”; the swooping pterodactyl that carries off Raquel Welch in “One Million Years B.C.”

Though his on-screen credit was often simply “technical effects” or “special visual effects,” Mr. Harryhausen usually played a principal creative role in the films featuring his work. He frequently proposed the initial concept, scouted the locations and shaped the story, script, art direction and design around his ideas for fresh ways to amaze an audience.

Mr. Harryhausen made use of many different photographic effects and often combined several in the same film. But he was best known for stop-motion animation, a painstaking process using three-dimensional miniature models that are photographed one frame at a time, with tiny, progressive adjustments made by hand to the models between frames to produce the illusion of movement.