Stop Motion Works & Retro FX: Beyond T-Rex (1997)

Long ago, I actually crossed paths with persons who worked on Beyond T-Rex. Her name Shelley Smith and also her brother Tim Synder, both involved with the the stop motion production for Hall Train Studios in Canada. Years later, Shelley eventually traveled down to Portland, Oregon and then to SF bay area to work on some stop motion projects.

It might surprise you that the dinosaur armatures were WIRE ... NO ball & sockets! Shelley revealed this to me and I think, I might has seen a couple of photos that Tim emailed me. It did not occur to me to ask how the animation was so smooth? They perhaps used some kind of customized home made frame grabber or a > video lunchbox? I do not know if there were computer stop motion frame grabbers tools back in 1996-97.

Production Crew > Beyond T-Rex IMDb

This video copy on Youtube, the resolution not so good ... in those days, > old style TV video tape quality. Perhaps, the scenes could also have been intentionally photographed to have a soft swamp-like atmosphere which contributes to its hazy look. In addition, before you judge harshly, again ... wire armatures were used, and therefore full expression & fluidity of the animation perhaps limited (by the wires), however, I thought the feeling of massive size & sense of weight, looked reasonably good! In the overall documentary, the stop motion dino scenes are very few. Just a reminder, from the crew list, only 4 artists were responsible for the puppets, miniature sets, backgrounds, compositing & special effects!

Here are some of the stop motion only scenes from Beyond T-rex

Below, is the entire 1997 Beyond T-Rex documentary (52 minutes). Yes it's 27 years old but I thought it was still an entertaining & informative watch. Try to ignore the obnoxious large video water mark on lower right. The Youtuber who uploaded this documentary implying claim to it (?), but actually, copyright does not belong to him!

Let us not forget about the enigmatic & mysterious HALL TRAIN Studios! I wonder if that is his real birth name? It sure does sound bad ass ... Lol! His portfolio is bulging with past & present projects. Beyond T-Rex was one of Hall Train's earlier works using the stop motion animation technique. Since then, I believe that he has not done any other stop motion projects. He currently does work for natural history & science museums, exhibits, theme mark, film, television, media.

Click > HALL TRAIN BIO

My reference to the 1999 'Walking with Dinosaurs' was in regards to; that I believe it was one of the first dinosaur documentaries, where the creatures were fully created using CGI specifically for the television market. If you think about it, the movie, Jurassic Park was released in 1993 which was an important cinema milestone back then ... the first organic realistic creatures on the big screen that were computer generated (& animated). So 6 years later, the Discovery channel first introduced CGI dinosaurs which was perhaps, another milestone for television. Of course, today ... you have overflowing quantities of CGI dinosaur documentaries, with herds & herds of dinos dazzling you ad infinitum. They say bigger & more is supposedly better? 😉

UPDATE: Apparently, Hall Train Studio also did work on another dinosaur themed documentary which also included Stop Motion, The Ultimate Guide: T-Rex (1996). This is the full documentary. For the stop motion dino scenes, you will have to fast forward to find them. This video upload to Youtube is somewhat okay and the stop motion scenes have slightly improved resolution. > IMDb