Minor research: Eiji Tsuburaya
with the dawn of stop motion animation starting with Willis O' Brien with King Kong (1933) inspiring a young ray harryhausen, anonther budding filmaker was inspired for his own passion of monsters, and would help give birth to the most infamous one of them all, and that man was Eiji Tsuburaya. Not only creating an entire film genre known as "Daikaiju" (meaning giant monster) but also help creating historys most famous monsters and japanese icons such as Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and Ultrama, inspiring many other film makers for years to come and for his techniques would still be used to this day even after his death.
Because of costing issues, Tsuburaya could not create the effects for Gojira (1954) so he then decided to make coin his own visual effect, known as suitmation but is commonly known as "Tokusatsu". Technique was done around a man in a rubber suit and manipulating the perspective of where the camera was placed to create the illusion of a large creature. furthermore, filming with high speed cameras for greater frame rates allowed the footage to be slowed down to create the look of a more slower and lumbering movement and making falling buildings look more heavy and solid when crumbled.
However, for some scenes some effects a suit couldnt cut it. for some shots that were either couldnt be done due to the suits minitations or for far away shots, Eiji Tsuburaya would impliment the use of a Shoku prop, or a puppet which was used for perspective shots or flying kaiju such as mothra and rodan. However the role of portraying a monster in these films is no easy task, for the actor was as risk at all times.
Haruo Nakajima known mostly for portraying godzilla from 1954-1975 had his own fair share of injuries on set including being set on fire by explosives placed on the suit, being rendered unconious from the heat and heavyness of the suit and electricution.
The methods both ray harryhausen and tsuburaya had both crafted would later in turn be handed to other practitioners and filmakers and would then be perfected and modernised, but the craftmanship between these two men will never be forgotten and can still be seen in many films made today.