In episode 67 we talk about Arlo, the Apatosaurus from Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur.
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In addition to Arlo, we talked about all the special features in The Good Dinosaur, Land Before Time, and We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story. And we had the pleasure of talking to Chris Coulson, the owner of and dinosaur man behind Rent a Dinosaur. Learn more about Dexter, the life-sized baby T-rex, and see videos of Dexter in action on http://rentadinosaur.co.uk/ and on Facebook. You can also reach Dexter on Twitter, @rentadinosaur.
Below are some amazing images of Dexter, in the process of being made and as a happy baby T-rex playing with others, that Chris was kind enough to share. Enjoy!
In this episode, we discuss:
- The dinosaur of the day: Arlo the Apatosaurus
- In creating Arlo, director Peter Sohn always knew that he wanted the character to start out very weak
- He considered having Arlo attacked early on setting the stage for his fear, but decided that he wanted it to be more of a character trait than a one time event.
- From the very beginning Arlo is portrayed as the “runt of the litter,” including coming out of an enormous shell to emphasize his small size
- Arlo has very knobby knees and skinny legs compared to what a real dinosaur would look like
- They also say that when he is weak he walks a little bit more like a camel with his legs bent.
- Early in the story he often kinks his neck to show a lack of confidence in a way that Apatosaurus probably could not
- Luckily for Arlo other members of the crew suggested little behavioral traits aside from just fear to add depth to his character.
- Arlo has large feet that resemble an elephant’s and they are much wider than the leg
- Like many animated characters Arlo’s eyes are much bigger than they would be on a real animal and even compared to the rest of his family.
- His eyes also have a large white amount relative to the iris and pupil. In nature very few animals have this, but humans and dogs are two of the major exceptions. (Necessary so that you can tell where they’re looking and express more emotions with their face)
- In the Good Dinosaur Arlo is shown at three ages: when he hatches, as a young child, and finally as a preteen. As he gets older his posture gets more dinosaur-like with shoulders straight down rather than a sprawling posture.
- Arlo has about 20 teeth
- In the movie Arlo is definitely an herbivore, but he never eats plain foliage. He eats corn that his family cultivates, and he eats berries after Spot brings them to him (after first being offered a bug and a lizard)
- It’s an interesting choice because with that diet he wouldn’t need the dental battery and large number of teeth that Apatosaurus probably had.
- Arlo knows how to swim, at least after learning from spot, so not surprisingly he basically swims in a doggie paddle type way.
- Fun fact: Fireflies or lightning bugs or more technically the family of beetles Lampyridae. The first proto-firefly may have evolved as early as 150 million years ago, and fireflies that resemble what we would see today evolved about 20 million years ago, so there was definitely a chance that Apatosaurus or at least some other dinosaurs would have seen fireflies.
For those who may prefer reading, see below for the full transcript of our interview with Chris Coulson:Continue Reading …
