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So, finally, somebody is opening up.

Hardly anything ever broke up Duane Aurich’s daily routine of drinking, partying and selling drugs.

At 19, he had been on that path for as long as he could remember.

But then, a little over a month ago, a gnawing sense that he did not want to end up in jail like his parents overtook him.

He decided he wanted to change his life, change his fate, change his path.

"My parents sold drugs and I ended up being in a gang," said Aurich, who lives in a Covenant House center in Newark.

"My dad’s out (of jail), but my mother committed suicide in prison. I’m trying to get my life on track — if I have kids, I don’t want them to go through what I went through."

Aurich said he found help to turn his life around at Covenant House, a nonprofit organization that for decades has assisted children in trouble. Wednesday, New Jersey’s Covenant House got some help of its own in the form of a $1,000-per-ticket fundraiser at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

It's hard to think of today's action-packed blockbusters or fantasy/science-fiction films being made without computer-generated visual effects.

Can you imagine Andy Serkis performing as Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" franchise without a rendered mask that mirrors his facial expression?

As marvelous as the technology is, many of us remember a time when the creatures that existed only in our imaginations came alive on film after hours of painstakingly building and molding them ... by hand.

Stop-motion model animators make their creations appear to move on their own by photographing every small, gradual change they make to the position or action. When you play all the frames together, voila: Viewers will see a living, kicking and talking being.

One master of stop-motion model animation is Ray Harryhausen, a producer and special effects creator whose latest book, " Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook: Models, Artwork and Memories from 65 Years of Filmmaking ," was released May 1. Harryhausen's fingers are behind epic movies like "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958), "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963) and "Clash of the Titans" (1981).