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Special Effects Artist Yasuyuki Inoue Passes Away


Yasuyuki Inoue, one of the most innovative and influential Special Effects artists in movies, has died. Inoue spent his entire career at Toho Studios creating creatures and miniatures for all of Toho’s scifi and fantasy movies, including Godzilla.

His career began by chance when, while hanging around the studio, Inoue was hired to design and build props and models for movie sets. Inoue was ultimately recruited by Eiji Tsuburaya (1901-1970) for his SFX team—a collaboration that would become legendary. It was Tsuburaya who established the signature SFX of Godzilla being played by a man in a specially designed latex costume and the use of miniatures.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s Inoue and his creative team designed and built every piece of SFX magic in Toho’s films. Cities like Tokyo and Yokohama were built with meticulous detail only to be destroyed by a man in a suit. Yasuyuki Inoue’s biggest, and final, Godzilla film would be Godzilla 1985: The Legend Is Reborn (1984).

In 2008 Toho Studios produced the documentary Bringing Godzilla Down to Size: The Art of Japanese Special Effects. Directed by Godzilla junkie Norman England, the documentary would finally tell the entire story of an amazing era of Japanese SFX, begun by Eiji Tsuburaya and Yasuyuki Inoue.

Bringing Godzilla Down to Size is included on the DVD release of Rodan/War of the Gargantuas by Classic Media.