Notice the dark circle below and to the right of Aladar's eye. 

D.I.G. You were involved in the "look" of the film... the color design and so forth. Can you explain how this works in an animated feature film?  How does it differ from Art Direction in a live action picture?

D.K. Actually, the final colors were supplied by Christy Maltese.  At one point there were over 600 color designs for Aladar alone, that’s what happens in preproduction, an exploration of ideas.  I helped provide the working car, and others painted it and made it saleable.   I supplied a lot of reference on skin and color but they had to make sure the characters' colors reflected personality and wouldn't compete with the environments.

I know in animation you have total control of your environment, camera angle, design and light shapes, but in live action you are limited a little more.  Art directors like to have everything fit together in their world, so if you take out one little piece of the puzzle it falls apart.  I often made suggestions that would help play up the strengths of the designs though.  A good example is a simple dark circular pattern on Aladar’s cheek That helped accentuate his most important feature, his eye. The eyes of any character, be it realistic or cartoony, are the most important feature. The rest is just icing.  Everything should support the eye.  That's especially hard when you have a 100-foot long animal with a tiny head. 

D.I.G. Did the team ever consider having feathered dinosaurs? Why didn’t they make it into the final version?

D.K.  The Velociraptors were originally supposed to have feathers.  When Aladar meets them he doesn't know what to make of them, and their exotic appeal draws him into their trap.  They were like a little band of Indians with the alpha male having a feather crown that looked almost a headdress. It was cool. There was a great feather shader that we could apply too, but eventually, and I'm sure it was money and practicality, the idea was dropped.  It would have been a lot of extra work on an already difficult movie.

D.I.G. What did you feel was the most difficult and perhaps frustrating part of this project?

D.K. When Jurassic Park opened, I was that guy in line telling everyone that raptors didn't look like that.  I think karma caught up with me. Taking animals that I loved and putting lips on them was hard.  I often became angry with myself because of the damage I was doing to everything science had accomplished.  It was when I realized that these were characters and not scientific dinosaurs I began to relax.  As characters, especially dinosaurs of the same species, it was important to the story to differentiate them.  Many people have told me that then they should have different markings or patterns, and that would be enough to tell all these Iguanodons apart.  What happens to those colors at night, or when there one all-powerful light source?  They disappear because color is relative.  To create distinct silhouette values for the Iguanodons was necessary.  Kron had to look totally different than Aladar, who had to look different from Bruton.  The characters are in a herd, and we must be able to pick them out instantly or else the viewer is removed from the film, which is instant death in cinema.  When the actors were cast I actually had fun adapting dinosaur faces to look like the voice talent.  I just had to realize what kind of film it was we were doing.  It was hard enough trying to maintain whatever accuracy did make it in! 

D.I.G. How close is the finished material to your vision of how it would look?

D.K. Dinosaur is a fantasy film and a Disney movie.  If we made the mistake of other films and called it science we'd be sunk.  Given how hard this groundbreaking project was to make, I'm quite proud of our accomplishment.  Of course, being a complete dinosaur geek, if it was up to me, it would be different.  This movie will be seen by millions of kids, and how many fires will it light in those inquisitive little minds?  For millions of kids this will be what King Kong was to me.

D.I.G. What excited you most about this film and its story?

D.K.  Any time a movie can transport you to another place and time it excites me.   I love to see dinosaurs walk around.  I love to see a world without telephone poles.  It is a gorgeous movie to look at!

In all, making this movie was a dream come true for me.  And if believing in dreams makes me a sold-out dinosaur geek, hand me my mouse-ears!
 

April 11, 2000 
David Krentz and his wife Kimberley
Although he is Canadian, David has not appeared on South Park.

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David Krentz

1. EINIOSAURUS PROCURVICORNIS  "BUFFALO BULL" by DAVID KRENTZ 
2. Gorgosaurus libratus By David Krentz
3. MEGALANIA REVIEW PAGE: DAVID KRENTZ'S PALEOLIFE ART