Mesozoic Mind

It's the third anniversary of Mesozoic Mind. It's been a long three years so far, but I'm doing well, and I promise I will post more (or at least go back to just two per month ata minimum - without burning myself out). What better way to celebrate the oocassion then where I got the inspiration for this very blog's title: Dinosaurs: A Fun-Filed Trip Back in Time . This 1987 VHS short that's actually an extension of a 1980 short produced by the great Will Vinton, simply titled "Dinosaur". Both of them are made in the midst of the Dinosaur Rennaisance and the renewed interest in the subject . Land Before Time was in theatres that year for just one example of 80's dino-mania, the kind that gave rise to Jurassic Park . The doc starts with a young kid named Phillip, played by Fred Savage, struggling to get an idea for his science report but can't, and his mother is nagging him about it. However, a song comes up on his boombox, and it leads into the ve...

If you've seen compilations of early CGI films from the 1980's and 90's, you may have seen this. I previously mentioned it in my review of Donkin's Dinosaurs , but never got around to reviewing in full... as it were. This is Chromosaurus *, creating by a fledgeling Pacific Data Images, written by animator Don Venhaus (the director however is unknown as of this writing), and released in 1985, the bery fiest CG work to use dinosaurs in any capacity, albiet here robotic ones. It was quite a year for palaeomedia, as it included not just it (the first CG-animated work period), but also the CBS documentary Dinosaur!  with its stop motion dinos and no doubt many's introduction to the Dinosaur Renaissance's ideals, what is known as the Normanpedia that introduced the palaeoart world to John Sibbick, as well as the Disney movie  Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend . It seems to be the year that kicked off the hype for prehistory that led to Jurassc Park in the 90's, and...

Ah, Computer graphic imagery. Before you became so commonplace and went too far in development so fast, you were a fascinating, bergeoning little world living on college campuses and inside basic computers, one of an optimistic future of 1980's Reaganite and Clinton's 90's America. Really, I have a nostalgia for early CG, as there is a genuine, endearing sense of care put into it and a fuzzy dreamlike feel to many of them, as well as growing up with many of these early CG projects.  Today we will be looking at two courtesy of one John C. Donkin, ananimator who worked at Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design . I know nothing about him at the moment, but I do know he went on to work at Blue Sky Animation and worked on Ice Age . he created two works in a two-part project about the prehistoric creatures we know and love. Keep in mind, this was at the peak of the Dinosaur Renaissance when the image of dinosaurs as succesful and fast creatu...

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind! While the next proper review is still being written, we're gonna be tided over with a fairly short documentary from 1988 and San Francisco-based Harbinger Films, A Whopping Small Dinosaur! ( Link at Internet Archive  - watch it while you still can!) This 26-minute documentary made at the height of the Dinosaur Renaissance documents the discovery and excavation of the Triassic dinosaur  Chindesaurus  at Petrified Forest National Park, albeit 9 years before it was even given a name as Robert Long and other alumni of the University of California Museum of Palaeontology in Berkley study it, while relevant info is also talked about, like the environment it was from and previous expeditions the UCMP has done, like with Annie Alexander . Fin fact: the specimen is nicknamed Gertie, after the saurian cartoon character from 1914, though the name appears nowhere here. While there isn't really all that much to AWSD information or cr...

Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind for the new year! Today's subject of Mesozoic Mind, the oldest work featured so far, may trigger nostalgic flashbacks, whether your a British person growing up in the 80's or worldwide in the 2000's via Youtube. It's Dinosaurs: Fun, Fact and Fantasy , a 1982 Direct to Video documentary oriented at children, courtesy of Pickwick Video. It aired at a time when palaeontology was in the middle of re-evaluating dinosaurs not as sluggish, slow, evolutionary failures but a successful clade, yet the public hadn't yet quite caught on. Also, please excuse the low quality screengrabs. The video ain't even HD. After a montage of dinosaur related B-rolls (and featuring the OG King Kong from 1933), we begin with a stop motion short on life in Mesozoic England, most notably a stooped-over Megalosaurus  on the prowl and eventually felling an Iguanodon , because really, what else is it gonna eat? Cetiosaurus or anything it actually lived...