The plan was to release a limited edition of the Raptor and T-Rex sculptures as bronzes. The actual original sculptures made as maquettes for the movie were used here... with some changes to make them more dynamic.
Since the sculpts for the film were purposely made to be static neutral poses for symmetry, they were not the prime look Stan had in mind for the bronzes so artist Dave Grasso and I were assigned the task of reworking the dinos to be more interesting as art pieces.
Dave primarily worked on the Raptor while I made the changes to the T-Rex. We started with plastic castings of the original sculpts and cut the joints of the arms and legs and removed enough repose them with bent joints. Then we sculpted the missing details and muscle structure back in to match the original surrounding features. The heads, necks and tails were cast in silicone with armature wire inside so we could pose them in alternate positions, allowing us to preserve the original details while getting new posture. Then all of the separate parts were molded, cast again in plastic and we merged them into one final sculpt in their final poses.
The last part of the job was all me. Since the actual pieces were now going to be forged in bronze they were not available to be photographed for the promotional brochures so it was my task to paint the plastic ones to appear as real metal so we could shoot the pics.
Below are my painted "faux" bronzes.
Christopher Swift sculpting the velociraptor maquette
Final faux painted Raptor "bronze".
Mike Trcic sculpting the t-rex maquette
