Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Let's Watch "Dinosaurs: Fun, Fact, and Fantasy"!

You know, I was all set to review "Dinotasia".  But right after I watched that, I watched an older dinosaur show that had been lying around on my YouTube "Watch Later" queue, and I found it much more interesting and worthy of discussion.

Tangent time for the curious: "Dinotasia" is a very strange edit of the animated sequences in "Dinosaur Revolution".  So if you've seen that already, it's not even worth your time.  Unless you love the melodious sound of Werner Herzog's voice, in which case you should watch "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" instead and become humbled as f*** as an artist.  The only thing different for me was I really noticed how frequently questionable the animation was this time.  Someday, dinosaur documentary animators will learn that CGI dinosaurs on a real live background for an entire film never look entirely right, and also that they are going about integument all wrong.  Until then... ouch.

Anyway, I called this show interesting, but really the more accurate descriptor is, freakin' fascinating.  It's from 1982, so it's from right at the last gasp of the pre-Dinosaur Renaissance way of thinking, so there are more than a few unintentional mind-screws seen thirty-one years after the fact ("Plodding Dinosaurs"?)  So here for your enjoyment is Picture Palace Productions made-for-video documentary for children entitled "Dinosaurs: Fun, Fact, and Fantasy".

Either that, or it is a collective fever dream we're all having involving singing crocodiles, a "Pokerap" but with dinosaurs (from before the "Pokerap" was even a thing, no less), magic dragons, and other, weirder things.  I don't even...?



(Note, I initially watched this because I had it confused with a Ray Harryhausen documentary with a similar title, but isn't that our old friend Dougal Dixon in the credits?)

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Sketch of the Day!  Inspired by an odd mechanic in a "Jurassic Park" game.

2.28.13 Sketchbook Page