Dutra’s stop-motion animation for Jurassic Park’s “Dinosaur Movement Bible.”Ĭraig Hayes (computer interface engineer, Tippett Studio): Basically all the full-motion dinosaurs were going to be foam, latex, aluminium and steel armature stop-motion puppets, that would then be shot on bluescreen. It cooked for about a year, and then eventually it was decided to do high speed puppets with go-motion.īrian Knep (computer graphics software developer, ILM): Go-motion was something Phil had pioneered on Dragonslayer where you would pose a creature in a motion-control rig, and then move to the next pose and it would basically hold both poses and move between them as you open and close the shutter, giving you this nice motion blur that you didn’t get in normal stop-motion.Ībove: Senior Animator Randal M. Phil Tippett (dinosaur supervisor): When I was first sent the script to Jurassic Park, they were talking about doing full-scale animatronics and I thought, that’s never going to happen. Plus, there’s a bonus section on the DID’s surprising influence in Tippett Studio’s major headway into CGI on Starship Troopers. In this new oral history as part of Jurassic Park’s 25th anniversary, vfxblog speaks with some of the original developers and users of the DID to find out how it worked, how it sometimes didn’t work, and where it made a major impact on the film. It also would also ultimately be awarded a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy (presented to Craig Hayes, Brian Knep, Rick Sayre and Tom Williams). This ‘DID’, which would later also be known as the Digital Input Device, was a dino-shaped sensor-covered armature that could translate stop-motion-like input to a CG model, allowing Tippett’s traditionally trained animators to lend their skills to this new wave of digital animation.

That is, until a secret ILM test with computer-generated dinosaurs convinced director Steven Spielberg to go with that digital approach, perhaps changing the course of VFX history in the process.īut, determined to stay ‘in the game’ and continue to contribute a rich knowledge of dinosaur movement, Tippett Studio combined with ILM to build the Dinosaur Input Device.

In visual effects lore, it is well-known that the full-motion dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were originally intended as stop-motion puppets animated by Phil Tippett’s Tippett Studio. The oral history of the Dinosaur Input Device or: how to survive the near death of stop-motion

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