Jurassic Park: model movement, digital skin, and physical eyes
Jurassic Park combined computer-generated dinosaurs with full-size physical creatures. Its 1993 release contained about 6 minutes of computer animation and about 9 minutes of animatronic dinosaur footage. Those totals describe screen time rather than the number of different species or the amount of work involved. Stan Winston's team built physical dinosaurs, while Industrial Light & Magic developed digital animals that could move through photographed environments. The two approaches shared a film rather than replacing one another completely, with scale, movement, texture, and close-up detail distributed across different kinds of effects work.
The original plan for Jurassic Park had called for stop-motion animation for shots that physical creatures could not perform. Phil Tippett's team would animate dinosaur models frame by frame, and ILM would help integrate the results. Before the release, digital tests changed the plan. Steve Williams and Mark Dippé worked on an animated Tyrannosaurus demonstration that persuaded Steven Spielberg and the effects supervisors to pursue computer-generated animals. The change came less than a year before the film reached theaters. It required a production system that could develop and animate convincing digital dinosaurs quickly enough to fit an already advancing film.
The change preserved an important role for model animators. ILM and Tippett Studio developed a Dinosaur Input Device, with work by Randal Dutra, Tom St. Amand, and colleagues at Tippett Studio and ILM. A physical armature carried electronic sensors that translated its changing positions into digital movement. Animators familiar with posing models could use those skills to drive a computer representation. Technology from Tondreau's go-motion work contributed to the system, and the movement passed into Softimage. Dinosaur animation therefore involved a bridge between a poseable object and a digital model, rather than a clean division between an old craft and a new machine.
Jurassic Park's digital animals needed surfaces as well as motion. ILM's Viewpaint system allowed artists to paint directly onto three-dimensional computer models. Texture could follow the form of a creature rather than remain a flat drawing disconnected from its shape. Camera tracking helped match the virtual camera to the movement of the live-action photography, and digital compositing joined dinosaurs to those background images. Film scanning brought photographed material into that workflow. Fewer than 60 shots used fully computer-generated dinosaurs, but each demanded coordination among the model, its animation, its painted surface, the camera, and the photographed setting into which it would be placed.
Physical creatures carried a different set of detailed surfaces. The Tyrannosaurus eyes began with the proportions and appearance of a large predatory bird. Eye artist Rob Hinderstein developed the original design for Winston's Tyrannosaurus from an eagle eye. An early version included visible white around the iris. The design later changed to reduce the conspicuous white and make the dark pupil stand out against a mottled surrounding surface. The creature's gaze depended on a manufactured eye fitting a much larger mechanical head, with the shape of the surrounding lids and socket affecting what the audience could see.
The eyes also had depth within their painted construction. Hinderstein built darker color farther inside the iris and lighter tones toward the outside. Texture, veins, and variations in pigment helped avoid the effect of a flat painted disc. The Tyrannosaurus used yellow, ochre, and brown coloring, while the raptors drew on different animal references. Snake-eye designs were among the possibilities explored for them. Their pupil forms were incorporated into sculpted components, and alternate designs were tested before the final choices. The work treated eye shape, surrounding anatomy, surface color, and internal depth as related parts of one facial feature.
These effects supported an adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1990 novel. Crichton and David Koepp developed the screenplay, and Spielberg directed. The fictional park occupies a remote island where dinosaurs recreated through genetic engineering become attractions for visitors. Sam Neill and Laura Dern play scientists invited to inspect it, alongside Jeff Goldblum's mathematician and Richard Attenborough's park founder. Winston's full-size creatures gave performers physical animals to occupy the set with them. The digital work supplied other movements and views within that same setting, joining the actors' photographed environment to animals that could not all be built or moved at full scale.
Jurassic Park received Academy Awards for visual effects, sound, and sound-effects editing. Within Winston's shop, the eye work also led to a system for other dinosaur accessories. Hinderstein painted shaped forms and enclosed the color in clear dental acrylic for toenails and spikes, including pieces for the Triceratops. The transparent exterior protected the internal paint from rubbing off and gave it visible depth. Work on eyes and accessories developed into a dedicated shop within the studio, with Hinderstein responsible for acrylic components. The surface details of a physical dinosaur extended well beyond its skin and jaws to many separately made parts.
- Industrial Light & Magic, Creating Dinosaurs for Jurassic Park — www.ilm.com
- Industrial Light & Magic, Jurassic Park visual-effects archive — www.ilm.com
- Amblin, Jurassic Park (1993) — amblin.com
- Stan Winston School, Rob Hinderstein and the dinosaur eyes of Jurassic Park — www.stanwinstonschool.com