While at Pixar Studios, I got to learn more about The Good Dinosaur that I can’t wait to share with you in the next few weeks leading up to its release. First up…

Designing and Dino Movement Fun Facts for Disney Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur

Designing a Big World: How the Art department designed the different dinosaurs in the film and their surrounding environments.


  • A Pixar film usually takes 3 – 4 (if not 5) years to make, so they will have hundreds of concept art by the time the project is finished.
  • At Pixar Studios, in depth research happen throughout the film to capture the feeling and believability to capture a real world place. They want the settings to feel authentic and powerful!
  • There are landscape painting influences when it comes to their settings. They look at and how it masses the vegetation on the hill side and exaggerates natural features to express a feeling…it’s an important part of telling the story.
  • Feelings is a key part in all character designs because they want to make sure the characters are appealing.
  • They want all of the features to be just right, even things such as a scar placement.
  • They also look at scale relationships and differences. Arlo being 18 feet tall and Spot being 3 feet tall posed some problems for getting them both in the frame but they used that to push themselves and figure it out.
  • The movie takes place over 3 seasons, starting with Spring and ending in Fall so they had to design everything accordingly.
  • The river in the story is Arlo’s “yellow brick road” so it served as a visual spine of the movie…if he sticks with the river, he’ll find his way home.

Acting Like Dinos: How animators created the movement of the dinosaurs.



They started off by saying how lucky they are working at Pixar and love doing what they do.

  • Every film they work on, they become the characters. They are constantly pretending that they are these characters.
  • The fact that they had to “become” a dinosaur was tricky since they couldn’t go out and actually observe one. So they spent a lot of time at the zoo looking at elephants and giraffes.
  • They looked at the elephants for weight and scale. They also look at the look of motion.
  • The locomotion has to look just right, so they broke it down to 4 key poses: (#1) When the head is up, the hips are up. (#2) The head down, chest is up, hips are down (#3) Mirror image of #1 but with the other leg (#4) Mirror image of #2 but with the other leg … Then they add character and personality
  • They do what’s called blocking…they show the work they have done to their peers/crew and the movie’s director for notes. They then go back and make the appropriate changes. They are always feeding off each other to see what they can do to bring each other’s work up to a pretty high standard.

I am super excited to see The Good Dinosaur with my family when it hits theaters on Thanksgiving! I really want to take Spot home with me.