The character models far surpass those in WWD. They are razor sharp, the textures are (in most cases) excellent!
I would even go so far and say this is visually the most impressive Dinosaur movie Ive seen so far. And Ive seen a lot.
I agree the landscape isnt as convincing, but it is good enough IMO.
I agree. These models are really ready for their closeup. Some of the shots looked so crisp, that they actually seemed like physical props. I cannot possibly grasp how anyone could say the WWD ones were better or at least less "cheap-looking"... that show has some aged CGI! At least it could hide some of its faults behind the grainy picture quality and the mostly pretty masterfully done compositing. But if it was a fully CGI show like this, I tell ya', it'd get laughed at wildly by today's audience.
Too bad about the animation, though. As good as the models are (from a purely technical standpoint -- they still suffer from plenty of scientific inaccuracies), they looked horrible in motion most of the time. On this front, I'd say WWD has it clearly beat.
Thanks for your opinion. Interesting, I thought most of the animation was good.
I just watched WWD again and I have to say the animation is NO way better than in PD.
shareI felt that the animation was very stiff and awkward most of the time, and the animals didn't have a genuine sense of weight to their movements. Some of them moved insanely fast. Some of the walking animations were also messed up, the Spinosaurus for example shuffled too much. The movements of the Hatzegopteryx have been compared by some people to marionettes. They moved seriously stiff and jerky and the momentum of their movements didn't seem to carry through. The animation in WWD seemed much smoother and had less of an artificial feel to it.
I believe that the directing was the source for most of the problems, come to think of it. In WWD, shots generally lasted long and the animals were "filmed" from perspectives that made the show seem like an actual wild-life docu. In contrast, the handling of the virtual camera in Planet Dinosaur was all over the place. It shook almost constantly, there were tons of quick cuts, it zoomed in and out like crazy, and it often felt as if the camera was undercranked -- as in, the animals moved waaay too fast in some shots.
For instance I checked through the Carcharodontosaurus fight scene frame-by-frame once, and there was a moment when one of them opened and closed its jaw under a mere two frames -- no way would that be possible under normal speed, the footage was clearly sped up. The same happens when the Sarcosuchus snaps at the leg of the Paralatitan (or whatever the sauropod was) and in the scene where the Predator-X catches a Kimmerosaurus, and it zips through the water. The direction of that sequence was laughably bad, because they kept randomly speeding up the animation, so that I couldn't even follow what was happening.
I have no idea why they did that. I know they wanted to have more freedom with their virtual camera, but it was ridiculously mishandled and made a lot of scenes very hard to watch.
I agree some scenes were hard to watch, due to the speed and quick cuts. But I still think the animation wasnt worse than in WWD.
Overall its still the best looking Dinosaur movie Ive seen so far. Or can you name another?
Some of the stuff from Dinosaur Revolution was also pretty good for a TV production, especially from its first and fourth episode, though I'd say that most of the CGI in that show was still below the general quality of Planet Dinosaur's effects. A lot of the computer-imagery in the other two eps looked especially bad (the leg movements of the animals weren't even synced to the ground), at least PD didn't have that kind of jarring inconsistency with its CGI.
shareThanks! I couldnt find Dino Revolution on DVD/blu-Ray :-( But I did buy DINOTASIA. But man, that one was very bad, both technically and storywise! The design of the Dinosaurs was also laughable. I also hated the fact that it was way too brutal. The director seemed to have fun with sadism!
shareYeah, Dinosaur Revolution was meant to be a grotesque, comedic animated show for adults... sort of like a gory and silent version of Looney Tunes. It was never fit to be edited into a documentary. Especially since it was only half-finished.
I have only seen the original version, not Dinotasia, but they're not that different from what I've heard. The original cut has a couple more scenes, but also an obnoxious narrator that keeps spouting ridiculous lines.
Though the dinosaurs in DR are generally regarded as the most accurate ever on TV. Fanciful and speculative, but mostly accurate to what's currently known about them.
You know, I think these two shows had a nice contrast. PD had a very serious, scientific approach and the dinosaurs looked kinda conservative, while DR showed more brevity and imagination with its dinos. Though I didn't really like DR, it was still fun to watch after PD's dry seriousness.
I like the serious approach of PD.
I think the overall dinosaur design in DR (Dinotasia) is very bad. A T-Rex with a skull like colour sheme on his face? C'mon! How can these be the most accurate Dinos ever? Hard to believe...
BTW I love the Sauropods in PD. The babies are really cute :-)
They're considered the most accurate because they contradict the fossil evidence the least out of every other dino docu. They have the anatomy pegged, the head shape is correct, the proportions are okay, even the arm-posture is right. I can't think of any other show or movie that has a more accurate T. rex.
The skull pattern is of course speculative, but not entirely unrealistic -- it was modeled after the color scheme of sea iguana. And there's nothing that proves that it didn't have such a mark either.
I mean, yeah, it's kinda silly and wholly unsupported by evidence, but since we don't know for sure what the actual colors were, there's nothing wrong with bringing some creativity into designing it. It also fit in with the tone of the program -- remember, it originally wasn't meant to be a documentary, but a comedy-drama show. They were also going to have a Freddy Krueger-inspired Therizinosaurus that gets its skin burned off and then goes around mass murdering other dinosaurs, but they cut that scene because there was no time to finish it. The skull-faced T. rex is relatively tame in comparison.
So apart from the colors (and perhaps the scales), the T. rex is pretty good. As are most of the other DR dinos. Even with their fanciness, they are less iffy than PD's dinos, which did suffer from some noticeable but minor inaccuracies.
Conservative dinosaur constructions, like those of PD, are beginning to "go out of fashion" nowadays, because people and paleontologists see them as boring and unimaginative.
Actually, there's a new book out that discusses this exact phenomenon, titled All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals. It talks about how uncreative and boring the dino reconstructions of the '90s and 2000s are, and proposes a new way of imagining them, both their appearance and behavior while still keeping them realistic and accurate to the fossils. Dino-fans are going crazy for that book, it's already regarded as a modern classic, and it appears to have started a new "revolution" in paleoart.
It seems the future belongs to the daring and speculative dino reconstructions of Dinosaur Revolution.
Thank you for the great infos. You seem to be a real Dinosaur Pro !
Do yo work in this area?
I will look out for this book.
Ok even if the Dinos are the most accurate in DR, there is still a big problem with the bad CGI. I mean most of the CGI looks cheap.
I definitely agree with that. I watched an episode of DR on TV a couple days ago (they just started showing it in my country), and most of the graphics looked terribly crude. The raptors moved like wind-up toys, and some of the other critters (like the gliding mammal) looked like they came from a decade-old CGI cartoon show. I read that they used at least two different animation teams, and one of them was responsible for these bad effects, while the other produced better CGI. It's really jarring how much the quality shifts.
And to think that they originally hyped the show as "Avatar meets Jurassic Park"!
Do yo work in this area?
The book should be available on Amazon.com. I dont know if I will buy it... well I dont like the illustrations much. But the text seems very interesting.
Did you see the T-Rex in the LAND OF THE LOST movie? It is one of my favourite T-Rexes. (Aside from JP).
Yes, I was a Dino fan as a child. I love THE DARK CRYSTAL most. But, aside from Hensons fantasy masterpiece, Dinosaurs still fascinate me.