Velociraptor practical effects (The Lost World)

For The Lost World: Jurassic Park, five total practical effects were created by Stan Winston Studios to be used to bring the Raptor to life. Along with three, fully animatronic rigs, an animatronic head and torso, and a pair of mechanized wearable legs for shots of the feet, were crafted for use in the film’s production. These animatronics, along with ILM’s CGI representations, would be used in two scenes: The Long Grass massacre, and the Worker Village chase.

Design
Because The Lost World: Jurassic Park would be featuring both genders of dinosaurs, a new, more colorful, scheme had to be created for the male counterparts of the female Raptors seen in the previous films. Taking inspiration from nature, it was decided that the male color scheme would be noticeably more colorful than the previous, monotone grey-brown of the females. Several different color pallets were applied to line art drawn up by Mark McCreery, including a yellow and black pattern and a green and red pattern that matched the novels. The final color scheme chosen upon by Shane Mahan was an orange and black pattern reminiscent of a tiger. In order to upgrade from the previous film, Stan Winston Studios used a thinner and slacker pull on the foam latex skin, in order to give the skin more realism.

Animatronics
A total of three full-scale animatronics (one female, two male) were constructed with complete mechanical upgrades to the design. Rather than radio cables that were utilized in the first film, telemetry controlled hydraulics were instead used, giving the Raptors much more fluid and life like movements. Cables were left to only a few of the facial movements, such as tongue and eye movements. The upgrade in the mechanics also meant that instead of the eighteen total puppeteers required to man the cable operated animatronics in Jurassic Park, the new Raptor animatronics needed as few as two operators. The animatronics were also used by the crew for the actors to visualize where Industrial Light and Magic would later replace the immobile animatronic with a walking CGI counterpart in post production. The animatronics, fully completed, measured six feet tall and thirteen feet long. Another use of the animatronics was through a partial rig. A partial body build that comprised the torso from the waist up and head/neck sections, the armature was filmed as it broke its way through a passenger seat window in order to get to Dr. Ian Malcolm.

Walking Rig
Because of it’s effectiveness in Jurassic Park, another mechanical walking rig was built for use by John Rosengrant for the shot of the Raptor stalking Dr. Sarah Harding on the Kiln House roof.