Walking With Dinosaurs 3D explores a fluffy, feathered look at the beasts from our deep past

FOR generations we've been stricken by fear at the Tyrannosaurus Rex's reptilian features and roar. But was it really feathered, fluffy - and, well, kinda cute?

FOR generations we've been stricken by fear at the Tyrannosaurus Rex's reptilian features and roar. But was it really feathered, fluffy - and, well, kinda cute?

Dinosaurs are getting a makeover in the new 3D film "Walking With Dinosaurs".

It's out with the traditional leathery and scaled features.

It's in with the feathers.

"One of the small little raptors, the Hesperonychus, are also known as 'killer turkeys,'" Cook said. "We literally took the colour palate and the feather pattern from a golden pheasant and it just looked perfect! "

The film's Troodons were also rendered with feathers.

But the producers have shied away from covering the Tyrannosaurus Rex with downy fluff.

The raptor Troodon, a Jurassic Park favourite, most likely had feathers in reality. Picture: Walking With Dinosaurs 3D

"When you think about those smaller raptors, like the Troodons - creatures similar to what was seen in the famous 'Jurassic Park' kitchen scene … there's some fossil evidence that suggests that there were feathers," Barry Cook, co-director of the new animated 3D film, said.

More 'traditional' dinosaurs keep their leathery and scaled looks. Picture: Walki...

"A lot of the palaeontologists who do artistic renderings have been playing around with what they might look like with feathers - and it looks quite natural, because if you study those raptors, they sort of look like birds. They've got big, muscular legs. Like, if you think of a chicken or a turkey, they have big legs and small, little wings. The raptors had claws on the end, but just from a bone structure, they're very much like non-flying birds."

Not chicken ... Walking With Dinosaurs 3D's producers shied away from giving a cousin of the T-Rex "fluff...

But when it came to a close cousin of the T-Rex, they gave it iridescent scales. The inspiration for Gorgosaurus came from a picture of a modern-day lizard.

"Its skin was very dark - almost black - with a very light-coloured underbelly, and its scales were an iridescent blue, almost a turquoise," said Cook. "We put that on the Gorgosaurus, and it just looked fantastic. A little flashy, maybe - but I always argue that it's a movie, let's have fun with it. Let's push it as far as we can, and still make it realistic."

A fluffy Tarbosaurus pursues a pair of feathery Gallimimus. Picture: National Geographic / JOHN CONWAY

National Geographic writer Brian Switek, who was hoping to see a feathery Tyrannosaur in the film, remarked that "scaly skin certainly has tradition on its side, but tradition is not the arbiter of accuracy."

There is very little science when it comes to the colours and features of our ancient "feathered friends".

So, plenty of "artistic licence" has been applied.

"Our art director at Animal Logic, Simon Whiteley, and I might get a crazy idea, run it by the palaeontologists, and they would say, 'Well, you know, this is possible - I can see how this could work'," Cook said.

New life ... New digital animation techniques have been used to create far more realistic skin and muscle movement than ever ...

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