Behind the Scenes of The Good Dinosaur

I recently went to Pixar Headquarters where I got a special behind-the-scenes look at The Good Dinosaur! The movie wasn’t finished so I only saw about 30 minutes of it, but what I saw was completely breathtaking. In the beginning of the movie, it actually took me a few minutes to determine if the scenery was animated or an actual video! Everything from the water to the tops of the trees looked like it came straight from a photo in National Geographic.

It’s not easy to make such a beautiful movie, though. There are so many different teams working on every aspect of the movie at the same time. I had the chance to meet with several people from those teams while I was there, including Animators Kevin O’Hara & Rob Thompson and Production Designer Harley Jessup. They all gave us a little insight into how Arlo’s world came to be!

When I met with Animators Kevin O’Hara & Rob Thompson, I was surprised to learn the inspiration for Arlo’s movements. Since there obviously aren’t any real dinosaurs left to watch, the animation team headed to the zoo to watch the next best thing- elephants! Elephants are around the same size that eleven-year-old Arlo was supposed to be {although elephants don’t have quite the impressive neck}, so they studied the way that the elephants shifted their weight as they walked. They took a video of the elephant walking and placed it into their amazing software, which allowed them to see the bends at the hips, knees, and ankles while the elephant walked. The animators watched the video over and over until they realized that there were four distinct patterns of movement for the four legs, and they worked to include that in their animation of Arlo.

They actually gave us a demonstration of Arlo’s walking animation by playing a clip for us of him walking up a hill. They pointed out the similarities between Arlo’s steps and the elephant’s, and with that perspective it was definitely easy to tell that they were inspired by the latter!

Another fascinating thing that we learned from the animators? The 21 second scene of Arlo walking up that hill, which included roughly 30 steps total, took about a month to animate. A month! Luckily there were about 85 animators working on The Good Dinosaur- if there had been only a few, this movie would have taken decades to finish.

Meeting with Production Designer Harley Jessup was a treat as well, as he discussed some of the insight behind the character and set design. He talked about how they decided to differentiate between the genders of the dinosaurs- the female dinos had more rounded heads and the males were more boxy. I could definitely see this with Arlo’s family, and it’ll be fun to watch it in action when I see more of their characters during the full movie!

He also talked about how they make clay sculptures to help them see what the animation would look like in 3D, which allows them to visualize the characters and figure out how they would look from different angles. We actually got to see some of the sculptures in person- including some that hadn’t been finished- and it was like the characters had jumped right out of the movie! {Of course, they were lacking some color, but it was so fun to see such an exact replica.}

Finally, Harley talked about how they had to figure out exactly how to make Spot look and act. Since Spot walks on all fours and is completely wild, they couldn’t just treat him like a typical child. They had to find that right balance and it took time to figure it out! I think they nailed it- I have a {non-wild} boy the same age as Spot and I could see the similarities and the differences blending perfectly to create a unique yet relateable character.

Want more behind-the-scenes looks at The Good Dinosaur? Check back next week or read my campfire interview with Director Peter Sohn & crew!