Dinosaurs Reanimated Production Blog

Torvosaurus

2012-01-09T00:11:00.000-08:00

So it took me longer than it should have, but a while back Brian contacted me asking if I could do a pass on some of the awesome dinosaurs that are gonna be reanimated, and this is the first of what will hopefully be many more to come. It is based almost entirely off of Brian's Torvosaurus, my basic goal with this being to rethink the linework and give different ideas for the colors/skin and ornamental decoration. View full size for sure!

Hopefully we can get a lot of different perspectives and ideas for this project. I'll be doing some sketchier stuff soon. Cant wait to see some stuff from everyone else!

More tests: dinosaur and giant monster

2011-12-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

Golly it's been way too long since I've posted here. I've been busy with work and other projects, but fear not - Dinosaurs Reanimated has been simmering steadily on the back burner.

I've been mostly focused on trying to figure out the most efficient way to get good looking animation from the 'textured 2d' technique that you can see in the Cryolophosaurus running test animation. The key thing to sort out is which details will be drawn frame by frame and which details will be part of the texture that is attached to the hand-drawn animation. What you see below is a rough test sketch of how the textured regions could be divided up and arranged on top of the hand-drawn animation. Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT FINAL ART... it's just crappy test art, but once I start working with it in the computer, it will tell me what I need to know...

Also, in order to test if and how digital distortion tools can be used to facilitate the creation of slow moving animation (which will certainly have large dinosaur applications) I did this animation test - Disclaimer: NOT DINOSAUR RELATED:

Basically drawing the monster's slowly head bobbing up in perspective would've taken much longer if I had to draw every single frame. So, I drew a number of keyframes (I think 14 or so) and then did some sneaky things to blend each drawing into the next and thus get more mileage out of each drawing. You can read more about the process on my website here: http://dontmesswithdinosaurs.com/

Crylophosaurus test animation

2011-10-01T04:13:00.000-07:00

Please share this with everyone.

Also, it is good to watch in HD/full screen.

It is my hope that this animation demonstrates that there are exciting new possibilities for traditional 2d animation to be explored when combined with digital technology in a hybrid workflow, and that 3d computer animation is not the only medium which can be used to create compelling depictions of extinct creatures.

The technical process is conceptually fairly simple; the character is animated by hand and then sections of detailed color and texture are tracked to the movement of the character, and distorted to match its shape and movement. With some further experimentation, refinement, and attention to good design I believe this technique could be made efficient enough to work in a full production pipeline on a larger scale project.

Further animation tests to come...

2011-09-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Just found this:

Jurassic Plant macroremains from Portugal

it has awesome pictures of beautiful plant fossils. Check it.

Re-imagining Jurassic Portugal

2011-09-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

First of all, this:

^^This^^ is not supposed to look like Jurassic Portugal. This is the environment I've created for our Cryolophosaurus test animation to run through. Hopefully it looks something like Jurassic Antarctica did. I'm trying to have it all done and uploaded to YouTube in the next few days. And yes, the dinosaur you see is a still from an animated run cycle, and yes the forest broken up into several layers (several of which aren't visible here) that will pan past in false perspective.

But what about Miragaia?

I've been doing some research into the environment of upper Jurassic Portugal and what I've found is really interesting. As of the first pass storyboard I had only found species lists of the kinds of plant fossils that were found in the same stratigraphic range as Miragaia. What I found indicated that there was a high abundance of ferns, a few species of horsetails and cycads and a number of coniferous trees (Geikie, Text-book of geology, Volume 2). The fern diversity included all kinds of ferns, from small things, to big tree ferns, so I naturally envisioned a lush, permanently moist forest like the ones in which tree ferns thrive today. Since then I've come across other sources (Rees, et a, Martineus and Gowland) that indicate that in fact the climate was semi-arid subtropical with a summer wet cycle. This was baffling to me; a semi arid environment with an abundance of ferns?

So i asked Matt Wedel what he thought, and this was his response:

"The problems with this paleoenvironmental reconstruction are, first, that no-one actually knows what a semi-arid fern-dominated ecosystem looks like, because we don't have any around anymore, and second, that you have arrived at the cutting edge of science; there is no consensus on the paleoenvironment of the Lourinha etc. formations because paleobiologists are still working that out.

It seems to me that horsetails wouldn't be around unless it was wet most of the year round, at least in places. That still leaves a lot of options, from fern- and horsetail-dominated oases separated by arid plains, to freakin' Skull Island. And--this is the important point--_no-one knows_ whether reality matched either of those extremes or something in the middle.

So as the paleo advisor on the project, I say go with whatever looks coolest and is easiest to animate that doesn't do any outright violence to the science (i.e., no sand dunes or multi-canopy rainforest). Ground cover should be ferns and horsetails, but it doesn't have to be continuous, there may well be patches of bare earth. And if the environment is seasonal, you could choose to set the scene during the rainy season when everything is lush almost everywhere, or in the dry season when the fern cover has died back except in fairly permanent wet spots. "

So I got thinking about a more open, patchily forested environment, and it completely changed how I imagine the theropods in that region hunting. In a dense, lush forest one can imagine a big predatory dinosaur lurking around under the cover of foliage, but when thinking about a more open environment I was struck with the image of our Torvosaur antagonist sitting quietly atop a rock outcrop overlooking a fertile alluvial fan with a game trail running through it. So I sketched these quick thumbnails.

Also, this came to mind...

Could it be that theropods were successful as hunters because their bipedal design made them incredibly efficient and enduring hunters who could persistently follow their prey until they eventually ran them down?

As for Miriagaia, I think it's long neck would've been even more useful for spotting an approaching predator out in an open meadow (as opposed to in a forest), which may have also contributed to the evolution of it's long neck. That said, I still think baby Miragaia would've sought cover in the denser undergrowth once it sees the predator.

So we've got some work to do. We need to imagine an environment that no modern analogue exists for: an arid to semi-arid environment where ferns and cycads are the dominant ground cover and various conifers are the only trees. Fortunately arid to semiarid conifer forests still exist, but the dominant ground cover in dryer areas tends to be grasses or other flowering scrub (which hadn't evolved by the Jurassic). There are a few species of ferns and bracken still alive today that have adapted to living in drier climates, and it is possible that similar ferns used to be much wider spread until grasses and other flowering plants took over. I'll keep doing research and trying to dig up reference to post here. If anybody else comes across anything interesting, be sure to point me towards it.

Preliminary reconstructions and first pass storyboard

2011-09-07T02:36:00.000-07:00

Preliminary rough reconstructions. Hopefully these provide a decent starting point for coming up with some rough character designs.

Skeletal reference.

First pass storyboard. Revisions from our first story meeting are noted, but a second pass hasn't been made yet...

Our Mission:

2011-09-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hello friends (and web-wandering dinosaur enthusiasts),

I've set up this blog as an easy way to share and view production materials such as storyboards, character designs, sketches, reference images, pencil tests and rough cuts.

We are attempting to create a short spec documentary about the reconstruction of prehistoric creatures that puts scientists and artists in direct collaboration in the production of a short animation depicting a dramatic moment in the life of an extinct creature.

Our goal is to put forth an alternative to the often scientifically inaccurate and artistically uninspired paleo documentaries that are the current standard on television channels offering science programming. We aim to do this by: 1) putting scientists and artists in direct and frequent communication and collaboration, 2) give greater weight to the creative and scientific input of the scientist(s) advising on the project, and 3) pioneer a unique 2d animation production pipeline, in which traditional hand drawn animation and background art is digitally colored and manipulated using advanced compositing techniques in order to efficiently create the illusion of detailed living creatures immersed in richly textured environments.

As part of a show pitch, it is our hope that our spec documentary and animation will help us to launch a television series that will show the public how artists and scientists use their imaginations and deductive reasoning to bring the prehistoric world to life. Each episode will center around a single prehistoric creature, and the narrative will be structured around re-building this creature from the incomplete fossils, to the reconstructed skeleton, soft tissues, and finally to the environment and speculative behaviors.

For our spec documentary we have chose the long-necked stegosaur Miragaia, and paleontologist Matt Wedel, an expert on long-necked dinosaurs, has graciously offered his scientific insight and support. As things develop we will post essential materials to this blog so that those of us directly collaborating on this project can have a common place to share and reference material, but also so that the public, other artists and scientists can view our work and give feedback.

My thanks goes out to all of you who have given feedback and support thus far. I look forward to seeing this project (and this blog) grow...

Brian Engh

http://dontmesswithdinosaurs.com