This is probably the first time I've seen a paleo blog post actually say something positive about Dinosaur Revolutions.

This was my review of the first episode, copypastad from my forum.

"It was okay. The CGI was unimpressive, and the animation was super inconsistent as we already discussed. The Saurosuchus particular was animated horribly and looked like a child moving a plastic toy.

The models were solid overall in appearance. The Glacialisaurus was the standout accuracy wise, though all were decent. I won't go into certain muscular and integument deficiencies again
The colors on all the animals were gorgeous, very unique and interesting. Though the male Eoraptor prompted a confused "why is it blue?" from my housemate.

In terms of story, character, actions etc. The anthropomorphism wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. Still, it didn't feel like I was watching real animals, nor did it feel like I was watching a documentary. It felt like a more accurate "The Land Before Time" for adults. When the anthropomorphism and mammal-centralism hit they hit hard. The Eoraptor nuzzling, and the whole Cryolophosaurus fight were blatant examples.
I liked the Permian opening. The Eoraptor story was decent overall. The Glacialisaurus part of the second main story was of good quality and probably the part I enjoyed the most in the episode. The Gigantoraptor part was a little bit over the top and I can see a partial observer finding it stupid, was also one of the more TLBT-ish moments. The less said about the mosasaur and Cryolophosaurus parts the better. I feel like they could have easily left out the mosasaur part and extended the existing Triassic stories or added another in.

The talking head parts weren't bad. The narration was pointless, dramatic and in places moronic, but that is of no fault of the show's creators.

The worst part of all though: I was completely puzzled as to where they pulled all this "non-avian dinosaurs were good parents" stuff from. I don't remember if any of the talking heads said it specifically or it was just in the narration, but this was seriously out of the blue. I was quite confused when it was first mentioned and was just like "what? no they didn't..." and then they just kept drumming it in. Did they just decide to pull a random idea from nowhere to drum in?"

My review of the second episode was a bit more positive.

Oh, nice to see you on the show as well Scott.

My review of the second episode (btw, sorry for the length of the posts):

"The CGI was a lot better than Evolution’s Winners I actually wasn’t expecting that even though everybody said it was.
The actual show itself was much better as well. I think having only one story per episode works better than jumping around, too bad I don’t think this is the format of the remaining two episodes. The anthropomorphism actually wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, and certainly not as Evolution’s Winners. Even the “Looney Toons” parts weren’t all that bad with the exception of the Torvosaurus intro scene. That and a couple of the exchanges between the “Bulldog” Allosaurus and Dinheirosaurus were the main issues in that respect.
There were other behavior issues though, they still seem pretty rampant on the whole parental care thing, even on sauropods which have been pretty much proven the opposite. The whole way the Torvosaurus acted was ridiculous. The ideas that it would destroy an entire herd of Miragaia without eating them and bum rush a cluster of herbivores were just asinine. They could have played much closer homage to the Battle at Krueger that they did with that scene.
Aside from that, and back to the positives, the whole was the animals moved and acted (mostly) was a vast improvement this time around. There were lots of times where they seemed quite animalistic and they didn’t have the humanoid expressions of the first episode (outside of that Torvosaurus intro scene with Tweety and Sylvester). I also liked Bulldog’s threat display, which was quite plausible and looked pretty neat.
Any other complaints would just be repeats from my review of the first episode (narration, etc.).

In the end, it was actually very enjoyable and felt a lot less like a remake of The Land Before Time. I do feel like this was the episode that the most time and effort was put into and will probably end up being the peak of the series."

Well, actually the "Revolution"
left me with feelings contrary ... I agree that animal models are anatomically correct, which is always appreciated, but had saurischians lips (?) and it seems that at some point Cryolophosaurus jumped on his tail like a kangaroo (??). .. also the structure of multiple stories of the first episode, mixed with comments too general of paleontologists, leaves the impression that would have been more enjoyable one story well told several clips half done. The second episode on the fauna of Portugal seemed like a great improvement, even the touches of comedy does not get tired as in the first episode ...
That said, I note the efforts of the animators and those who performed animal models, but I could not remove from the head the comparisons with Walking with Dinosaurs ... Maybe it's just me, but I think there was a problem with the expectations about the program as a "documentary".

By the way Scott, very interesting your blog. Not only is it useful to Anglophone readers! (please, excuse my English).
Regards, Julián.

Cut and Pasted, with some additions:

I thought the modeling and particularly the texture painting was pretty fantastic. The compositing was also well done, and leagues better than these shows tend to be.

I unfortunately can't say the same for the animation. (By animation I mean MOTION, not the overall look. Too many people tend to say "The Animation was great" about something when they really mean the RENDERING. Sorry...a pet-peeve of mine). The first episode in particular was really hard to watch due to the locomotion in some of those chase scenes. And I'm not talking about the anthropomorphism, but in the sense of smoothing animation curves and things like preventing foot sliding.

The second episode with the Allosaurus, I liked much better. There was still some questionable motion at times but as a whole I enjoyed it. There were a lot of really great little moments in there. I especially liked seeing theropods laying down in a that semi-roosting posture. I thought that was really cool, and their subtle motions felt really natural.

In general, the animation seemed to fall apart most in full body mechanics shots, and where there was lots of running. It was also clear that some animators were more experienced than others. The quality just wasn't consistent. The closeups, which tended to have much more subtle acting worked a lot better.

Despite my problems with the series thus far, episode two convinced me enough to check out the others next week. Looking forward to it.

Just posted my review of the first two episodes. A mixed review, I suppose, though mainly because of what seems to have been excessive network tampering. Nice to see you on screen, Scott!

http://chasmosaurs.blogspot.com/2011/09/review-dinosaur-revolution-part-one.html

This word just in: episodes 3 & 4 will be delayed to a later date; the network felt that they weren't the right kind of show for the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11. I'll be back here with the corrected dates when they are announced.

Thanks Tom, I'll get that changed pronto!

I have Directv and searched for "Dinosaur Revolution" under my menu. Apparently, Science Channel is going to air the next two episodes tomorrow (Tuesday the 13th). For Discovery, I have no idea when they will air those.

Sorry Scott, I calls 'em like I sees 'em. I did enjoy your comment that not all dinosaurs should be shown as colorful and not all the time, but that was the shining fragment of realism in a sea of well... dinosaurshttp://theropoddatabase.blogspot.com/2011/09/dinosaur-revolution-review.html

What I particulary liked about Dinosaur Revolution is probably for the first time we get to see dinosaurs actually behave like non-actors. (I won't as far as say they behave like animals)

Sure WWD, Dinosaur Planet, etc. didn't portrait the dinosaurs as monsters but everytime they're on screen their actions seemed over the top. They either roared, killed, ran, etc.

In Dinosaur Revolution, at least in the second episode, excluding the Torvosaurus and anthropomorphized behaviors, you can see the dinosaurs doing, well, pretty much nothing. The Allosaurus is either laying down or getting a drink along its prey for most of the time.

For what it's I liked it. It just needed more Miragaia and Octávio Mateus though. :P

I thought the models and reconstructions were some of the best and most accurate I've seen in animation. And every now and then the lighting/rendering/compositing had me going "damn, that looks pretty darn good!"... The character's behavior on the other hand seemed founded in a poor understanding of biology and ecology and was at times downright cartoonish.

Honestly I couldn't even watch a full episode. I was yelling at the screen too much. Maybe I'll try again later...