Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette:   Was it at all like the George Pal “Puppetoon” style of working with carved wooden replaceable heads and limbs?  Or like the similar process in The Nightmare Before Christmas? That system allowed the animators to “squash” and “stretch” legs to get across both weight and humor.
 

George Pal sits with gazillions of replacement heads for his puppetoons. 
Circa 1940
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 Eric Leighton  As far as a comparison to Puppetoons is concerned, in the look of the Dinosaur movie we couldn’t do squash and stretch. Truly one of the big challenges on the show was to create a boundary between reality and storytelling. We wanted to draw on the strength of what dinosaurs really were, we wanted to make them as real as possible. However, from an animation point of view, I wanted it all: the best of both worlds.  On one hand, the power, majesty, and realism of dinosaurs and on the other side of the coin I wanted to have as great a performance. The two were constantly at odds with each other. It depends upon the dramatic purpose of the scene. In a running scene we went reality based as much as possible based upon the theories that everyone agreed to use. For example, we favored the Bob Bakker “hot-blooded and fast” concept as compared with Jack Horner’s “scavenger” idea. In the end, though, it is all based upon a created “truth.” That already puts a little fantasy on top of things.

D.I.G.  As compared to reality, any exaggeration is a form of “cheating.”

E.L. Yes, we did other kinds of “cheats.” We beefed Carnator up by about 20 percent. We exaggerated the head size to make it more like, say, an Argentina dinosaur. It was just a little bit of cheating: A little more muscle around the eyes to make them more dramatic.

D.I.G.One fact of the movie that bothers folks with a paleontology background is the alteration of the Iguanadon beaks.

E.L.: A lot of paleo people came in to consult with us. We knew that as soon as we went to dialogue in the movie, we had to put lips on the dinosaurs. Otherwise they wouldn’t come off as heroic. We did actual “beak tests,” tests of talking dinosaurs that had the real beaks, and it came off as comic. It would have been okay for a sidekick character like Eema, but not for a hero character.  However, in talking to one expert, there was evidence on some beaks of having small perforations on top edge of the beak. This might have been a blood supply for lips.  Of course it is a difficult paleontological question. Soft tissue disappears over time. If people found the fossil remains of an elephant, would they figure out that an elephant had a trunk?
 

The iguanadon's beak is clearly visible in this early design drawing (circa 1997) by WilliamStout.

D.I.G. What did you each find most difficult to achieve in this film?

Ralph Zondag. There are a number of things that are difficult in the film ranging from animation issues to lighting and composition issues. Each department had its own problems. Lighting compositing was very difficult.  Lighting would change on the filmed background plates over the course of the day. There were some plates that we had to re-do the lighting on: actually flop the lighting and flop the plates in the computer.

D.I.G. What is the basic process of designing a film like Dinosaur? Is it the same as a traditional animated film such as Pinocchio?

R.Z. Ultimately everything begins with pencil on paper here at Disney. It informs everyone else what needs to be done. Storyboarding is a great idea anyway. It has to be rich and communicate the story and get a sense of the personality and character. It calls out to the other departments what’s necessary. If a lemur gets wet, we have to create a computer shader tool that has “wet fur” so the computer department has to go to work on that.

The process here actually changed. We started off with paper storyboards, then originally we went to 2D (“two-dimensional”) computer layouts or “workbooks” that showed color and the placement of the characters. Next we went to what we called 3D (“three-dimensional”) Workbooks, which is the fully rendered computer image.  But it evolved over time. The second half of the show went straight to storyboards, skipping 2D, and directly to 3D.  In 3D we worked out lighting and cutting. It saved a lot of money because we could go out to film background plates in all those foreign countries with a pre-visualized 3D workbook.

To integrate the actual locations used for the film, they first did a tech scout of various locations and an initial survey by satellite.  They use laser-surveying equipment to actually map the real location into a computer. Then the 3D workbook could include a virtual reproduction of the actual scene. Lens and animal placement was worked out on a story reel and then they went out and shot the final background plates on film so that they matched the story precisely.

D.I.G. Did this process change the story yet again? When you found out what the backgrounds would finally look like, did you alter anything?

R.Z.  When you are making a picture like this, the story is ever evolving. You try to find new ways to plant new ideas into the picture. We wanted to devise a way to utilize existing background plates to accommodate new ideas. 

Sometimes we came up with a new line of dialogue for a character. We would extract a section of an existing film background plate, use the computer to de-grain it and soften it with a little blur. Then we could lay in the new animation.

We often did reuse sections of background based on story changes.

In the raptor scene where they are circling Aladar near the beginning of the film, we actually re-storyboarded the scene after a tech-scout.