Prehistoric Beast is a ten minutes long experimental animated film fully conceived and made by Phil Tippett in 1984. This sequence is considered as being the first film produced by the Tippett Studio, founded by Tippett himself in 1984. Being made with the so called go motion animation technique Prehistoric Beast prior served to Phil Tippett to make special effects sequences for the 1985 full length documentary Dinosaur!, first aired on CBS in the United States on November 5, 1985.[1]
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This short film depicts the chase and predation of a Monoclonius by a Tyrannosaurus. A Tyrannosaurus is busy eating a dead dinosaur that night and finishes. Next morning, a herd of Monoclonius is seen grazing. One member wanders into the forest to find more food. It finds a field of flowers and starts to eat and eat. It wanders in further and starts to be hunted by the same T-Rex. It steps on a twig, which makes the Monoclonius wary. It lets out a trumpet to signal the herd. It keeps walking further into the forest. It soon stumbles upon the meal from the T-Rex. It starts to get really scared, while the T-Rex sneaks up from behind. It attacks and bites hard on the Monoclonius back. It breaks free and stabs the T-Rex in its shin, enraging it. The T-Rex manages to corner the Monoclonius near some trees. The herbivore lets out one last cry before it's killed with one deadly bite. The Monoclonius herd start to call out for their missing member, not knowing that it has been killed. The T-Rex is next seen trying to find a place to sleep and digest its meal.
Prehistoric Beast was only released in specialized animation festivals, but it convinced Robert Guenette and Steven Paul Mark to request Tippett's skills in order to transform it in a full length documentary. They then asked Tippett to realize new sequences with other dinosaur species, and the Prehistoric Beast material was added to the new one, resulting on Dinosaur! in 1985. Tippett had already participated in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), animating the tauntauns seen in the movie, and his experimental work on Prehistoric Beast and Dinosaur! served to the animated dinosaurs sequences he made some years later for Jurassic Park (1993).
On April 6, 2011 the Tippett Studio had published on its Youtube official channel a digital restoration of the short.[2]