The Gang of Five
The Land Before Time => 1988 Theatrical Release => Topic started by: Phantom on October 23, 2013, 01:18:53 PM
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So I've heard people complaining about Topsy and the Duckbills' colour palette in The Great Valley. Here's my take on it.
Aside from the children and adolescent dinosaurs, all the adults seem to be mucky colours of dark grey outside the valley. This is probably because of lighting.
Ever noticed how LF can be either brown or purple? Ducky is almost brown at some points in the movie. Same with Spike and Cera. Petrie is pretty consistent, save for his intro scene (he was kept in shadows to make the reveal more of a surprise). So is this because of the harsh lighting?
It seems to me that whenever Lf is purple, it's either nighttime or cloudy. Whenever the GoF is under harsh, desert sunlight, they go slightly brown.
In conclusion, I determine the final scene to represent the canonical colours of the dinosaurs.
LF is purple
Petrie is slightly red
Ducky is green
The Big-Mouths are light purple
Topsy is light purple
etc
To confirm this, we would have to screenshot each palette under every light condition (Harsh, cloudy, night, day, etc).Let's do some deduction, people.
PS: What would Sharptooth look like in the valley?
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The colors can vary even more depending on the lighting. In the original movie there are scenes in which Littlefoot and Ducky are yellow. In LBT 8 Ducky is sometimes depicted in gray (and while I cannot swear an oath on it without checking first I think she is not the only one). In nightly or cave scenes I think all of the characters often appear grayish too, but in those cases the grayish effect may come pretty close to what the original colors might look like in twilight (while in LBT 8 the gray sometimes came out in scenes of bright sunlight). There are also those scenes in some movies in which landscape and characters are turned red in case of danger (in my opinion a very exaggerated effect).
The colors vary even in the same weather conditions in different movies. For example in some movies Littlefoot appears as more brown than purple (Ali being more purplish than him even though LBT 4 is not a movie in which Littlefoot is on the brown end of the brown/purple-spectrum).
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This is an interesting thread..
In LBT 8 Ducky is sometimes depicted in gray (and while I cannot swear an oath on it without checking first I think she is not the only one).
I'm pretty sure Ducky is grey, the others have their special "snow colours" too.
It would be very interesting to compare different scenes of different movies with each other using screenshots...
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How are the colors symbolic, though?
Since one of my favorite parts of the original movie is the fact that the lighting changes, it always perplexes me when I hear people complain about it! :huh:
I think if Sharptooth had made it to the valley, he would be a more saturated green. So basically I think that all characters' coloring would be brighter and more saturated in the Great Valley.
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How are the colors symbolic, though?
Since one of my favorite parts of the original movie is the fact that the lighting changes, it always perplexes me when I hear people complain about it! :huh:
I think if Sharptooth had made it to the valley, he would be a more saturated green. So basically I think that all characters' coloring would be brighter and more saturated in the Great Valley.
I was going to talk about the emotional symbolism, but decided not to.
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On a side note, Grammy and Grampy longneck turn magenta briefly in LBT 7. XD