Advanced Stop Motion test for Jurassic Park

Before the movie industry went all CGI computer animation, this was one of the Stop Motion tests done by Tippett Studio (back around 1992) for the original Jurassic Park film. Steven Spielberg was going to use state-of-the-art Stop Motion, but later changed his mind and went with computer CGI dinosaurs for JP.

The news media & public wrongly judge old Stop Motion from 40 years ago and compare it to current CGI animation. Public does not know the potential of modern Stop Motion for Harryhausen'esque style creature special effects work. As you can see, sophisticated stop motion does have a different, more tactile, flavor. Not photo-real exact, but maybe surreal-real compared to the typical hyper fluid, air-brushy CGI creature effects works.
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This animation walk cycle was looped to slightly lengthen the test. That's why you will see an occasional cyclical jerk as it loops

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• go-motion
• harryhausen
• tippett
• stop-motion
• trex
• cgi
• rex
• jurassic
• park
• stop-motion-works
• lionel-ivan-orozco

[tmsods]

@dragnink

I agree completely, no matter how detailed the cgi is, it never really gets the feeling that it is a concrete object, I guess that's why the only thing that does actually look absolutely real is water lol

[Allante715]

CGI is just so easy filmmakers saturate films with it. God forbid one should use it sparingly and focus on the plot.

[Checkmate1138]

@tmsods There were some cases when CGI looked good. Jurassic Park, example, did not completely use CGI like Terra Nova |-( They used both actual models and computer models to make the dinosaurs look realistic

[sixstanger00]

I love stop motion. I loved "Coraline."

[x2boys]

This would be have been nice to see in Jurassic Park, but I'm kind of happy they went cgi

[TheBlackViper1007]

@quotenschwazze /watch?v=s43bRbZaAOk&feature=r­elated

[LosMt2]

it looks like 3 sec and the video duplicated, good job how many thing you re position the model?

[LosMt2]

awesome, very smooth

how many frames/takes is it total?

[gnikcuf888]

I am an animator and suclpter, if anyone could explain to me how they got the skin so thin on some areas of the T-rex , like juest inside of it's upper thigh by it's belly, I would really appreciate it. IT almost looks like a plucked chicken in a way, a very difficult achievement if it is a one ppour latex covering.

[TheUnbreakableOtaku]

Beautiful. The CGI in the film is incredible, but I wish this they would have gone this way.

[LastBornProductions]

I am so happy they didn't go with stop motion! I know however that they used a model like this as a controller to feed the computer the movements. Software was not like 3ds Max or Maya back then, and organic animation was not even a term yet. So the film actually portrays the stop motion technique. Every dinosaur you see moving was done completely by hand on a model and not a mouse, just like this video here!

[benjamindbailey]

The cycle is off, but still very nice work. I prefer old school. ;)