The Good Dinosaur

I read a pretty cool article about the Good Dinosaur. If you have seen a trailer or know anything about the movie, the dinosaurs in it aren't your typical looking dinosaurs that you see in the textbook. A writer for the website sat down with the director and asked him why he made them the way that he did. The director said it has all to do with the theme of "What if?". So what if the dinosaurs aren't what we actually think that they look like? Yes we can tell from the bones and such but we don't know what their coloring was or what exactly they were like. This movie questions all of that. They also made the dinosaurs hillbilly type of characters. Because the dinosaurs now live among the humans, what if they became like farm animals or something like that? If you want to read more about the article you can access it here. Also here is the link to the trailer if you want to know more about the movie:

The Good Dinosaur

Pixar Studio's newest feature film is arriving in theaters this Thanksgiving, and it will be the first pixar film to be released in the same year as another (ie. Inside Out) Pixar is also not slowing down. In 2016 we'll be getting Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo, followed by Toy Story 4 and the brand new property, Coco, in 2017.

Either way, Pixar is one to always push the envelope in terms of technical achievements. In Good Dinosaur, the focus was on Environmental Effects. For example:

A Look at foilage from Bug's Life (1998)

A rainy shot of procedurally placed foliage in The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Also Water has seen a whole new breath of realism, using a new algorithm to calculate fluid mechanics. Notice how in Finding Nemo the Water looks to be made more of plastic that the more real photorealistic water from The Good Dinosaur:

Marlin looks for his son in Finding Nemo (2003)

Arlo gets whisked away in photorealistic water in The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Lastly,The film's settings are unlike anything seen in a Pixar movie until this point, with a focus on large and extremely accurate open areas. The film's environments were created using terrain mapping technology to capture the actual geometry of several areas found in the American wilderness and then using that data to recreate photorealistic landscapes for huge areal shots.

The Terrain from Up (2009)

Procedurally Generated Terrain made for The Good Dinosaur (2015) 

With all the added hype surrounding this new feature, and the suggestion to work on title sequences for upcoming films I've decided to try creating a title sequence for The Good Dinosaur. I think creating a Title Sequence from scratch without having a preexisting idea of what the original looks like, I will have much more creative freedom to create my own!

The World of The Good Dinosaur

When I first saw the trailer for Disney/Pixar's The Good Dinosaur, I was just in shock and awe while watching this. But the reason why was because, not just of how fun and adorable the story seemed, but because how beautiful the animation looked. All of the textures and lighting looked unbelievably realistic. There were time when I looked at the picture and thought, "is this really an animation?! It looks like real life!" The only things that really looked animated were the characters, but everything else (trees, leaves, plants, all of the environment) was really well crafted and well rendered and looks so photo real. It's truly amazing how technology in animation and filmmaking has come thus far, and it's things like this that continue to inspire me to pursue my dream of working in this industry (although particularly as a visual effects artist for live action films, but the techniques still go hand in hand).
If you haven't seen the trailer yet, take a look at it right here! Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-RgquKVTPE