youtube, thepiratebay.se "walking with the dinosaurs" (the making of) will show you how they were done.
1. Paper design.
2. Model in clay (by sculptor artist)
3. "real size" model: skeleton, muscles (padding), structured latex skin (like normal actors make-up!)
3b. Animatronics if required ("Jaws", the mechatronic shark that never worked! :-)
4. 3D scanning.
5. 3D rendering
6. Animation.
7. Backgrounds
A friend of mine worked in the studios in New-Zealand. Her job was to "latex" the skins of dinosaurs, to show their "scales". Months of work for a few minutes of film.
Expensive? Yes: the rendering/animation program runs on mainframe and costs $2.5millions! Several artists/engineers/animators work on several stations for several WEEKS for a few seconds of film!
Real animals? Sometimes they are used to help the animators: equiped with "markers" over their bodies, they are filmed and scanned. Images of the markers are used to position the "models" correctly. Elephants were used to prepare the animation of mammouths. Elephants were also used, once "make-up" to "play" the role of mammouths (Quest of fire). Small animals, such as salamanders, lizards, also "make-up" and then enlarged by CGI to appear "big".
Nowadays, with the progress of CGI, many stages have been removed: it is possible (try with 3DS Max!) to build a 3D model of animal, render the sckin correctly and animate it... With 3DS Max, I make the model of a dragon: SIX months work!
Lots references, talent and practice.
I've always been fascinated by how realistic the CGI animals look in today's movies. How do they make them? Is it expensive? Are real animals used to make the CGI animals?
