Person's Race!

So this afternoon, I got out my ArtBin, threw a couple episodes of Science... Sort Of on the 'pod, and drew these:



Preliminary sketches. Part of me wanted to go with greyhound/horse racing inspired imagery and the other part could not leave the Boston Marathon alone. (If nothing else, I love, love, love the marathon logo.)



The second requested illustration. Doing the research for this, I learned that the default photograph of racing animals is to show one just tearing out in front of everyone else.



And the hadrosaur triumphant. Good luck to everyone involved! This was wikkid fun!

ART Evolved Banner Gallery

[I'm embarrassed to say that this post is very very overdue! It was meant to coincide with the launch of our "new" banner back in February, but I've had several distractions in the interim. Please accept my apologies everyone]

Ever since the launch of ART Evolved we had never been 100% happy with the initial banner we started out with. It is seen here below, minus the Trilobites that were added to it later.

The idea had been to show the skeleton on the left inspiring and leading up to the recreations on the right. However this didn't really work. The only clear indication was the theropod in the middle, with its half being drawn in and half not. Diminishing this narrative effect was the fact the wrong ends were coloured in and not. Overall this just wasn't going to do.

Then one day an idea hit us administrators. We had a whole site full of very talented artists, why not get them to help us fix it! A multi person piece of art would do just the trick to capture the diversity and variety of palaeo-art, and as a bonus incapsulate the community nature of this site.

This Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton was sent out as the basis for the banner, and the idea was members create their own T-Rex to match up with this skeleton so we could seamlessly stitch the various pieces together easily.

This was the result we got. We are rather pleased with it!

However the individual pieces we received are rather impressive on their own, and have up until never been seen on their own (or properly credits OOPS!). So as to fully credit (and show off the talents of) the contributors here is our Banner Gallery...

The Banner is composed of parts of the following pieces by:

Trish Arnold

Craig Dylke

Mo Hassan

Rachael Revelle

Peter Bond

Craig Dylke

Thank you to all these contributors!

We hope you enjoyed this mini gallery, the art contained within it, and ultimately the piece they have combined into in our banner. Hopefully the new banner captures the diversity and community themes we had always envisioned heading up this site.

Mallison; Tyrannosaurus skull musculature

Mallison; Tyrannosaurus skull musculature from david maas

Discussions with a skilled paleontologist like Heinrich Mallison is a luxury not many illustrators get to enjoy, so you can imagine what it’s like to have a day-long private tour of a museum… in this case, the wonderful Sauriermuseum in Aatal. (those Stegs!) I wish I could have had the whole day on tape, as I’m sure I was able to digest less than half of what we talked about. Here we are at the Tyrranosaurus rex skull. Sorry for the background sound and my left arm camera rig, but the energy makes up for it.
(repost from my blog)

Revamp Conundrum

I know it is a little off the topic of our upcoming Ichthyosaur gallery, but I have an immediate artistic problem that needs your help!

As many of you may (or may not) know I am the principle force behind Traumador the Tyrannosaur and his ongoing blog. Lately I've fallen behind on getting the little guy's (mis)adventures up, due to creating tons of new 3D art for his upcoming Dinosaur Winter Olympics.

Among this new art is a complete redo on Traum's love interest, the lovely Lillian the Albertosaur. It is in reconstructing Lillian I've hit my problem, and I need your opinion!

You can check out the full story (along with references) here on my blog. In a nutshell though my problem is this, Lillian was originally based on a popular sculpture of an Albertosaur by Brian Cooley. Of course recreating my own posable and virtual Lillian resulted in a drastic departure between the two. My revamp this weekend making the difference is even more extreme.

Does this defeat the purpose of my paying tribute to a childhood favourite piece of art? Or is it okay I've taken my own direction with the concept, as my Lillian's adventures are not supposed to directly link to the statue?

Please let me know your thoughts either in the comment section here or on my blog.

Also a quick plug for am upcoming Traum adventure that will be nothing more than a huge series of Palaeo-art posts! The 2010 Dinosaur Winter Games.

Yes, I know they are a bit late. I tried my best to get them up as soon as possible. However the amount of 3D prep work needed was huge. Added to this I've been in the middle of my third move in 4 months!

Please don't let their being a month late take away from the Olympic spirit intended. So please check them out this week, and cheer for your favourite team (representing 5 different regions)!