Inspiration is a funny, magical thing.

Universal Studios "King Kong" scenes at the Empire State Building were among those worked on by animator and former Pittsburgher Don Waller. Click photo for larger image.

You never know which childhood rituals -- a standing Saturday night date with Bill Cardille, a trip to an Oakland museum to gawk at the dinosaur skeletons -- will shape your life.

Take Don Waller. "I think I first saw 'King Kong' on Bill Cardille's 'Chiller Theater.' Do you remember that show?" If you're a Pittsburgh native, your passport to Steeler Nation will be revoked if you don't.

Waller's question comes, by phone, from New Zealand, where he's been living since September 2004 and working as an animator on Peter Jackson's "King Kong." He contributed to some of the epic's signature scenes featuring rampaging dinosaurs, supersize spiders and a girl, a gorilla and a skyscraper.

Cardille's late-night show on Channel 11 doubled as an introductory film class for Waller, a former resident of West View and a 1974 graduate of North Hills High School.

"I sure hope he knows how great that program was to, probably, I don't know how many kids. ... He showed great old classic monster movies, and I think I remember seeing 'Kong' some time in the '60s on the show, and I was just mesmerized. I had sort of known a little bit about stop motion, not too much, because back then the technique was very mysterious."

In stop-motion animation, the technique used in the original "King Kong," puppets are moved in increments of a fraction of an inch to mimic motion.

The 1933 "King Kong" not only had a giant gorilla, but dinosaurs. "What could be greater to a kid than having a giant gorilla fight dinosaurs?" Waller asks, especially after visiting the Carnegie Museum with his parents, Frances (now living in Ross) and the late Harold Waller.

"In my mind, I was imagining them come to life and everything, and then when I saw 'King Kong,' they were living, breathing dinosaurs. ... The excitement of seeing this island of prehistoric animals is what really fascinated me."

Dinosaurs have figured prominently in the life and career of Waller, 49.

He helped to animate a herd of ostrich-like dinosaurs for "Jurassic Park," brought the creatures back from extinction for Disney's big-screen "Dinosaur" and was nominated for an Emmy for Discovery Channel's "When Dinosaurs Roamed America."

For the new "Kong," he worked on shots in which a Tyrannosaurus chases Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), enormous spiders menace visitors to Skull Island and, back in New York, Ann dangles from a ladder near the top of the Empire State Building.

Waller, who usually stands at a computer when he works and only sits when he's really tired, logged long hours on "Kong." Normal schedules gave way to 70-hour weeks, which then swelled to include weekend work as the movie's Dec. 14 opening neared.

The process of computer-generated imagery is broken down like an assembly line, he says. "One department will build the model, another will do the skin for it and then you have your animation department," which blocks out the action on computers and runs it by director Jackson.

"And he makes the changes and decides what he wants the models to do or not do, and then you go back, and it's sort of a back-and-forth method that way where you're constantly changing and improving your shot.

"This is before the skin and textures and everything are added, so basically what we're working with is smooth-skinned, almost like a plastic-looking toy model on the screen. If it had all the skin and fur on it, it would really slow the system down. You wouldn't be able to move the model as fast."

Not exactly an unbiased observer, Waller thought the final cut was pretty spectacular. "They had a special screening for us before it opened wide. That was exciting to see, with all the music, because you're watching the film sort of in bits and pieces every day for a year."

He was particularly tickled by a scene on Skull Island in which Watts' vaudeville actress tries to entertain and distract Kong by juggling and dancing. "Just to see Kong laughing, that was a different surprise."

Waller's education was formal -- the Art Institute of Pittsburgh -- and on the job at animation studios in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, plus on the sets of "Pee-wee's Playhouse," "RoboCop" and many other projects. He also spent a memorable day at the London home of special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen in the early '90s.

It turns out that Waller and Jackson share more than a boyhood fondness for "King Kong." The former Pittsburgher, like the New Zealander, tinkered with moviemaking as a child.

He experimented with stop-motion animation -- a bird hatching from a shell, an octopus with wriggling tentacles -- at home with the family's movie camera. In high school, he worked on a movie called "The Plant That Ate North Hills High," with a papier-m?che monster resembling a Venus fly trap.

Like many other North Hills grads, he credits a former art teacher named Keith Herchen-roether with nurturing his imagination and talent.

"I was not so much like the normal kid. I mean, I was really into monster movies and drawing dinosaurs, and I always could draw and sculpt, so it meant Keith Herchenroether was very instrumental in encouraging me and allowing me to just sort of have the freedom to do all that kind of stuff, the fantasy stuff I wanted to do."

Waller didn't forget him when he returned to the school to address graduates in the mid-'90s. He has a plaque with the exact year, but it's at his Burbank, Calif., home on the other side of the world.

His work and his home life converged in May, when he married Kim Lavery, a visual effects producer.

He believes effects should serve the story, as they do in the timeless tale of the beauty and the beast.

"It's really nice to work on remakes of films that we all love, but I'm hoping the young writers come up with fresher, more original stories. ... It's really the story that's the heart of the film. The special effects, as spectacular as they look, should enhance the story, not be the story."