Special effects and make-up legend Stan Winston passed away on Sunday, June 15 and both the filmmaking community and fans lost one of the most talented men to ever come out of Hollywood. Winston's imprint on the film landscape was huge, having visually created some of the most memorable Oscar winning characters and special effects to ever grace the screen. From The Thing, The Terminator, Aliens, Alien Nation, Edward Scissorhands, Pumpkinhead, and Batman Returns to Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Interview with a Vampire, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Terminator 3, and Iron man (and many more), Stan Winston played a huge role in some of the biggest movies of all-time. Throughout his career, Winston also founded or co-founded some of the leading special effects houses in the business, and can be largely credited with inspiring some of today's top special effects artists.

In 2006, it was Stan Winston's magic creature touch that brought the creepy vampire-like "skinwalkers" to life in director James Isaac's action - horror Skinwalkers. Even at the age of 60, Winston was still pushing the envelope on make-up and special effects. It's safe to say we're all going to miss Stan Winston and his work, but we can't think of a better way to pay tribute to his legacy than to hear from the man himself in one of his final interviews.

When you finally end up going to see Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins next year, which Stan Winston was a part of, take a second and think about how we never would have such cool killing machines if it wasn't for Stan.

Stan Winston on whether there's a meticulous process he goes through when thinking up a creature:

"No, no, I don’t think about anything. It’s just an esthetical... Honestly, for me, the reality of skinwalkers - werewolves is a mythology and a creature and a beast that I’ve been enamored with since I was a little kid. I’ve always been enamored by stories that are about the beast within and that ranges from werewolves to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the dark side, Spencer Tracy’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolfman, Henry Hall as The Werewolf From London, all of these turned me on as a kid. But I was truly turned on by the performances, what I was truly turned on by was the story and the characters that these wonderful actors and filmmakers gave to us as classic stories and classic characters and memorable characters. To this day I remember the last words of Henry Hall in The Werewolf From London, and it was, ‘Thanks for the bullet,’ when he was killed by his wife. So here’s a character and a mythology and a creature that I’ve loved all of my life based on actors’ performances, given help by makeup artists and given help by filmmakers, but it’s always been about that character and that performance.

"Recently, we’ve taken it away from the actor. I embrace digital effects, I embrace all effects, it’s obviously what my career has been, but nothing do I embrace as much as the performance of an actor. And the through line that a good actor will give to a character and recently I’ve seen, especially with werewolf movies, the actor is from here to here and from here to here it’s handed off to an animator and an animated character and I’ve lost the actor and I’ve lost the character and the movie has lost me. I appreciate the work he’s done on the werewolf or whatever it is and that’s nice within its little package and I appreciate the art that’s been given to it, but I’ve been stripped of a thread of an actor’s performance.

"That’s what I wanted to come back with, with Skinwalkers. That’s the werewolf I wanted to bring back, those are the werewolves, the skinwalkers that I wanted to create and everything that happens to them physically comes from what is there to start with and then is extended upon. I don’t add teeth, grow teeth, I don’t add hair, grow hair. You know I don’t add eyes, tweak with them. It is what it is, it’s what’s happening to that human being and only tweak it enough that it makes it something you haven’t seen before, but does not lose the actor, does not lose him physically or lose his performance. And Skinwalkers, when you see the movie from start to finish, is the performance of our actors when they are human, when they are skinwalkers and everywhere in between the character is the actor’s character. Ninety percent performance, five percent makeup and prosthetic effects, five percent digital effects.

"We could not have done the Skinwalkers we did twenty years ago. We didn’t have the technology to, excuse my French, to f**k with their faces the way we did and we can with digital. So I use digital, you just can’t see it, you don’t know where it is because I’m taking anything away, every nuance is the actor’s, every subtle facial performance is the actor’s, we have just done our stuff taken our little bag of tricks and created a little magic. If you walk out of it and go, ‘Great digital effects’ - lost. If you walk out and go, ‘Great puppet’ - lost. If you walk out and go, ‘Cool skinwalkers’ - it’s a win."

Winston on how he maintains a passion for his craft:

"I just love it, you know. I love surrounding myself with creative people, I love movies, I love story telling - I have since I was a kid, a younger kid than I am today. I’m still a kid. Any chance to tell a good story and create a fantastic character that can’t be done without something I bring to it is a high, it’s a cool thing. I want to do it in a way you haven’t seen before and I want to do it the way I want to see it and I want to entertain you and I don’t wan to do it gratuitously and I don’t want to do it with a slash. I want to do it, no matter how big, no matter how small, with a certain amount of elegance and grounded in reality. And that’s kind of what I pride my studio on. That’s what I pride myself on. We always try to ground ourselves in reality and never design anything that doesn’t have some motivation behind it, some reason behind it no matter what the character is, no matter what the genre is, whether it’s comedy or horror or family, whatever it is. I’m anxious for people to see the skinwalkers and I’m hopeful that people who expect to see big effects will not be disappointed by watching actors do their thing."

On whether he has a favorite from all of the creatures he’s created:

I didn't have one until this year. I do now, and it's my book. Honestly, that's my favorite work to date and probably forever. I've always said in an interview like this, 'I don't have favorites, it's the body of work.' They are all your kids, and when I walk in my studio and I see these characters from Edward Scissorhands to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the Predator and The Terminator, all these great aliens and great iconic characters, I'm so jazzed by it. I'm so incredibly thankful that I've been a part of it, because I don't own any of it. It's all about all these people, these brilliant directors like Steven Spielberg and Jim Cameron, Tim Burton, all these great artists and technicians who work with me at my studio, that deserve all the credit. I'm just lucky I've been a part of it. Putting this book together is about all these people. That's why I can say it humbly. The book is all about the body of work, and that's a cool project."

Stan Winston on how his book could give away his secrets:

"No secrets, because the book is for people who are fans. If people care enough to read the book, then they deserve to know how the tricks are done. There's not a magic trick out there that, if you care enough, you can't go get a book and find out how it's done. There are books all over the place, if you’re interested, truly interested and not just some lazy guy who wants to know how it’s done. You can go to the magic store to pick up this guy's book on slight of hand or whatever, all of the answers are there. The good guys are they guys that aren't doing what you can go to the book for. They already did it. They are doing what the next book is going to be written about. So, I don't mind you knowing how I did what I did yesterday, because I already did that. You can copy that, you can do more of it, because I started it. I have no secrets, because that's not what it's about. Jurassic Park, when it came out, blew everyone away, because no one had done anything like that. The minute everyone knew that it could be done, everybody could do it. Everybody could go out and get a computer and make a bigger dinosaur, or make Godzilla. Well, go ahead, because I'm doing something else now. No secrets."

Stan Winston and the biggest challenge of his career:

"The T-Rex. The first T-Rex. The physical size of creating a full-sized, animatronics, robotic character. It was 40 feet long, from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. It happened to weigh nine tonnes, or 18,000 pounds, and could act. It could actually take direction from Steven Spielberg, through me, and go, ‘I want him to do this,’ and do it on the spot. That was a huge, huge undertaking, and a huge accomplishment. It wasn't the toughest thing I've ever done. It was the most challenging, but it was almost the most fun, because the atmosphere was a fun atmosphere. We were doing what [John] Hammond was doing in the movie. We knew we were creating something for everyone to enjoy - bringing dinosaurs to life. That was a fun challenge. It wasn't a downer, it wasn't doing something that was dark. No matter how big the challenge was, your goal is to entertain, and that becomes fun."