Making the dinosaurs of 'Jurassic Park' (pictures)

With "Jurassic Park 3D" hitting theaters this weekend, the legendary Stan Winston Studio reflects on the creation of the terrifying dinosaurs seen in an adventure 65 million years in the making.

This weekend, "Jurassic Park" celebrates its 20th anniversary with a 3D re-release likely to captivate and terrify audiences just as it did in 1993. During the development of the film "Jurassic Park," director Steven Spielberg enlisted the team at Stan Winston Studio to design and build many of the realistic-looking dinosaurs seen in the movie.

Surprisingly, "Jurassic Park" contains only 15 total minutes of dinosaur footage, and 9 minutes of those are purely the work of Stan Winston Studio. Winston, who died in 2008, was instrumental in many blockbusters, winning Academy Awards for best visual effects in "Aliens," "Terminator 2: Judgement Day," and "Jurassic Park." We look at a few special behind-the-scenes images and videos captured while Winston's studio created the Tyrannosaurus rex, Brachiosaurus, Velociraptor, and Dilophosaurus.

According to the Stan Winston School blog, Spielberg courted Winston to do a large portion of the "Jurassic Park" special effects after his work on the alien queen in "Aliens."

"Steven figured that if we could build a 14-foot-tall alien queen, we'd be able to build a 20-foot-tall T-rex," Winston said at the time. "But that was a somewhat naive assumption on Steven's part. There was a big difference between building that alien queen and building a full-size dinosaur. The queen was exoskeletal, so all of its surfaces were hard. There were no muscles, no flesh, and there was no real weight to it. The alien queen also didn't have to look like a real, organic animal because it was a fictional character -- so there was nothing in real life to compare it to. There was just no comparison in the difficulty level of building that alien queen and building a full-size dinosaur."

When Spielberg asked Winston if he wanted the job, Winston recalled saying, "Yes, absolutely." Spielberg said, "How are you going to do it?" Winston replied, "I haven't got a clue. But we'll figure it out."

This image shows the framework of an early pre-production one-fifth-scale T-rex sculpting stand. After applying clay to achieve the desired form, the model serves as a reference during sculpting a full-size puppet. Animators at Industrial Light and Magic also scan the model and embed that likeness into digital shots.

[Read more]