How the 9-ton Giganotosaurus of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ was created

The animatronic Giganotosaurus rig from “Jurassic World: Dominion” weighed around 9 tons. The Giga puppet’s tongue was so big it needed hydraulics to move it. “Jurassic World: Dominion” is now available on 4K ultra HD, Blu-ray and digital.

Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories. Following is a transcription of the video:See? Not so bad. [dinosaur roars] [screaming]Narrator: Look closely at these shots from “Jurassic World: Dominion.

“Notice how the Giganotosaurus’ tongue bounces when it opens its mouth, or how its skin reacts when it roars. Those reactions all happened in-camera from this animatronic Giga puppet, built to look and move like a real dinosaur. The real Giga was 20 feet tall and nearly 50 feet wide.

But as for the puppet, the rest of its body isn’t there. Building out the whole dinosaur would’ve made it impossible to move, so the practical and digital teams had to collaborate to make this into this. The production team had just three months to construct the entire head.

John Nolan: The head is the biggest dinosaur that’s ever been seen in any of the “Jurassic”s. Narrator: So the creature effects team started with a digital model based on sketches and sculpts from the film’s production designer. They then printed just the Giga’s head and cut it out of polystyrene.

David Vickery: Even though we only made the head from the tip of the nose to just about the shoulders, we needed to understand exactly what that entire creature looked like before we started making the animatronic. Narrator: This helped them match the CGI and physical versions from the start and avoid drastic design changes in postproduction. John used that head as the basis for a more camera-ready puppet.

First, it was covered in oil-based clay to prevent drying out and cracking. John: We skimmed the whole thing, almost like icing a cake. Narrator: It took a team of 20 sculptors to give the Giga its rough skin texture, with references ranging from historical evidence to crocodiles.

The head was then covered in a fiberglass mold to hold it all together while John injected it with foam latex. To set the skin, the foam needed to be baked into the mold, but the head was so large that it wouldn’t even fit in John’s oven. So instead of doing this step in one piece, they split it up into seven smaller sections, baking them in pieces in two ovens.

The finished foam pieces were then glued together. There was still a risk of the foam pieces splitting apart during filming, so each piece was also backed with netting for further protection. The final layer of foam latex was crucial for flexible movements and made a good, realistic-looking stand-in for the Giga’s rough and opaque exterior.

But the Giga also needed physical features that reacted to light realistically while being filmed, and foam latex lacked the translucency needed for moments like this, where the Giga opens its mouth wide. John: When the tongue lifts up, you want a bit of light to pass through the tip. Narrator: So instead of foam latex, the tongue and the back of its throat were made entirely out of silicone.

When it came to its outer skin and scales, a little light still needed to pass through its skin, but layering too much silicone would’ve weighed the puppet down. So those details were snuck in while painting its skin ivory green. John: All of the translucency and the details have to be sort of cheated with an airbrush on top of the skin.

Narrator: Look at the Giga under two types of lighting, and you can see changes in its skin color. But making this puppet look real was one thing. They also had to make it move realistically.

John and David decided to match the mechanical skeleton inside the head with what a real Giganotosaurus would look like based on expertise from paleontologists. David: We were kind of making a metal skeleton for the interior of the dinosaur to try and get as much believability and reality into the way it moved as possible. Narrator: They then used motors known as servos to power the head.

By placing rotational servos in the anatomically correct areas, the head could twist, pivot, and roll. David: Those pivot points sat exactly along the lines of where the vertebrae in the dinosaur were as well. Narrator: The animatronic’s facial movements were particularly crucial when interacting with the cast.

The team had to link these servos to move several parts at the same time. When the Giga closes its eye after Bryce Dallas Howard stuns it, the servos powering this eyeball and eyelid were preprogrammed as one movement. John: With this control system, we could literally press one button, because we knew how it needed to react.

We really wanted to have that area as organic as possible. Then we also had eye sockets that moved left and right, so the whole eye socket, with the lids as well, could move left and right, and then every time it blinked, the eyes would actually pull in. You actually find some reptiles and birds do that.

Narrator: You could also see all those movements happening here, as the Giga roars at Chris Pratt. John: The eye could pull back and blink, and then the nictitating membrane come across as well to protect the eye. Narrator: Servos weren’t enough on their own for the heavier parts of the head, like the tongue and throat.

Since those were made out of silicone, they weighed extra. John: The tongue is probably the size of a surfboard. Narrator: So those servos were mixed with hydraulics to push the extra skin around.

And for more dangerous interactions, like when the Giga uses its mouth to drag Bryce Dallas Howard, the movements were controlled live on set by a team of 15 puppeteers. The team also built in safety measures. The hydraulics used to move the Giga’s jaws prevented its mouth from fully closing in case somebody got too close, and preset controls helped keep the actors safe.

John: If anything went over a certain marker, then the puppet would just literally shut down. Narrator: These precautions were just as important for the puppet’s safety. Because it was built in pieces, the animatronic was incredibly fragile.

That made some action-heavy scenes more suitable for CG, like this shot, where the Giga smashes its head through a giant window. David: It was just going to break, or it’s going to tear the skin. Narrator: So for that moment, the scene uses both a CG head and window smash.

John’s finalized Giga head was 3D scanned to create the CG look. But these shots returned to the Giga puppet that was moving through an already-broken window on set. Run!Narrator: A similar combination of CG and practical effects was required here.

The catwalk destruction is real, but the dino is not. But the practical head returns in this shot. These seamless transitions between CG and practical meant that overall movements of the dino had to match the digital model perfectly, especially because there was only a practical head.

According to David, this was an issue they dealt with in 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. “David: The way the animatronic was moving was not conducive to us adding the rest of the body. They didn’t fit.

Narrator: So the special effects team built this customized rig and placed the 2-ton head on it. The mechanical rig was also placed digitally inside the Giga’s CG body. You can clearly see where the practical build ended and the animated body began.

David: Wherever the dinosaur moved, it would move the mechanical rig. So we knew that the mechanical rig had exactly the right range of motion to put the dinosaur in the right place. Narrator: Thanks to all the hard work to make the practical and CG work hand in hand, they could cut from a shot of the animatronic to a fully CG version back-to-back, and that switch could be completely invisible.

David: We wanted to use it on set to create a real tension and emotion and a connection between our actors and our director and cinematographer. You commit to a language. Our puppeteers on set become the actors, and the dinosaur is portrayed through them.

It gives us a language for our animators to work with and work into. Read the original article on Insider.