For Your Consideration: Diabloceratops

I may not be Lukas Panzarin, but I think I got the gist of it. Sketched in about a twenty-minute period at an excellent local Himalayan restaurant. Scott may produce a sketch of Achelousaurus later, as I was coaching him through it. Here's hoping my copy of "New Perspectives on the Horned Dinosaurs" arrives by the weekend.*

*Pipe dream, I know.

A New Ceratopsian Piece

I "love" looking for work, and it has been going so "well". The one bright side is that I've had time in between failed applications to do some art! As today was a particularly pronounced day of lulls (between 3 rejections! a new record!!!), I decided rather than just revamping models, I'd build a scene with one of them.

Ta-da! I give you my new version of my male Styracosaurs. You can see a bigger version here (as blogger is still not letting pictures I upload enlargen! Anyone know how to fix this problem?)

I'm looking for some serious feedback from you Ceratopsian experts out there. I spent some major time reworking the skull in particular. What else needs anatomical tweaking?

Pachyrhinosaurus, circa 1950

Look, everybody! When Charles Sternberg described Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis in 1950, he made an adorable 1/6th scale clay model of the critter. This is that, and I think it looks like a Protoceratops with a handy plate on its nose to put your drink. I imagine this animal sitting by your recliner, dutifully holding your Mt. Dew while you play games and watch TV.

But seriously, this is quite significant in that it's the first attempt to reconstruct this bizarre ceratopsian.

The Odds and Ends #1 Gallery

Some have wondered what would happen if they submitted pieces of art past a gallery's deadline. Up until today we couldn't have told you precisely, however due to a buildup of a few such pieces we finally came up with a solution today.


Welcome to an intern gallery here at ART Evolved, the first odds and ends gallery.


As the old saying goes "better late then never", here are the many pieces that have been sent our way that were a bit past their galleries postings (and deadlines). We apologize to their respective artists for them taking this long to be put up. There was some minor debate within the ART Evolved Executive as to the best way to get them up in a fashion that would be noticed by our sites visitors. Now that we have finalized this as a format they won't be this delayed in the future!

We had two galleries for which late submissions were received...

Here are a few late entries we received for our horned dinosaur gallery. For the original gallery click here.

Einosaurus by Matt Tames

Styracosaurus by Teddy Cookswell

Styracosaurus vs. Daspletosaurus by Teddy Cookswell





Styracosaurus Walk by Teddy Cookswell

Styracosaurus by Brian Blacknick

This is a sculpture of a Styracosaur I was commissioned to make for a stop motion film maker. In his film he is going to have raptors feeding on the thigh area.

We also had several interesting submissions sent in for the...

It would seem the Permian Synapsids capture a great deal of people's alternate reality/past imagination, as there was a submission in the original gallery of a similar speculative nature.

All the following submissions come from ART Evolved's own Raven Amos, and she explains these creations as...

"Years ago, I came up with my own race called the Ghrendali - a race of sentient therapsids that live on a planet orbiting the star Delta Draconis (also known as Altais, Nodus Secundus, or Aldib). I had done several sketches in the past and still don't know what to do with them - in high school, I made a D&D (Second Ed.) module with maps of their planet, custom class descriptions...indeed, I was half-way through with having an entire book dedicated to them in D&D form. Alas, time is not kind and all of that stuff was on a very old computer which inevitably fried before I left for college in 2000. All that's left is their ghosts, echoes of their digital being, trapped until I can create their world anew. Perhaps one day, I will."

Enjoy!

Ghrendali in Colour by Raven Amos



Ghrendali Dancing by Raven Amos

Ghrendali Pensive by Raven Amos

Ghrendali Skull by Raven Amos

Ghrendali Posed by Raven Amos

Making a Prehistoric Flood

By Craig

So the first thing I do when sitting down to do a composition is think to myself what is the story I want to tell today.

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When I approached my first piece for the Ceratopsian Gallery, I had the idea of showing the moment that one of the great Ceratopsian fossils sites was created. The particular site I had in mind was in northern Alberta at a place called Pipestone Creek, where a massive bonebed containing the remains of hundreds of Pachyrhinosaurs were discovered in 1972 (and worked until quite recently). These animals had all clearly been killed by a flood, and as it was pretty much just them in the bonebed they probably were all alive together before being killed (aka a herd).

So the story I wanted to show was one of the herd encountering this natural obstacle. Though it would claim the lives of some who tried to cross it, others would make it across successfully.

Here is the final picture for reference.

The only way I could pull off recreating a flood in the timeframe I had at the time (having to set up ART Evolved along side making this piece) was to create it via a photo composite.*

For those of you who have never heard the term composite before, this means taking a photograph and adding and/or subtracting things from it. In this case I was going to not only being adding Dinosaurs, but also a flooding river.

Looking through my many lovely pictures of the New Zealand landscape (it is such a great place to sub in for a Mesozoic era Earth) I discovered this perfect riverbank.

There was only one problem. There was no river, that alone one in flood!

However in my photo arsenal I DID have pictures of the local aqua duct flooding from 07.

It was not ideal at all though. The scale was wrong, it was too close up a shot. Not to mention the angle was all wrong.*

Still beggars can't be choosers so...

After some realigning in Paint Shop (my cheap Corel knockoff of Photoshop) I was able to get the flood facing roughly the right direction. Then some creative cutting and pasting supplemented by cropping of the water in a separate layer from the riverbank I had a rough flooding river.

Now sadly I didn't save this initial phase (I wasn't thinking about making a "Making of" post at the time) so you'll have to take my word on what it looked like. The problem it suffered from (more so than this finished one) was that the river unrealistically covered up the trees at the bottom of the hill.

So I went in and cut and paste several of these (but not all) back on top (in the photoshop layer sense) of the water. It was still missing something. So I went and grabbed some random tree tops and added them out further into the water to add some small growth submerged. That looked better, but one thing was missing. So some cut and pasted random splashes from the flood photo were added as water spray along the leading plants.

Though not perfect, this flood wasn't too bad considering the elements I had to work with.

Next it was time to add the Dinosaurs.

Recently I went through a huge Centrosaurid construction binge on Carrara, my 3D program, in anticipation of a big event I'm doing over on The Tyrannosaur Chronicles (check for it in about 2-3 weeks). So I had several short frilled Ceratopsians to choose from, including the two best known from mass bonebeds related to floods. Centrosaurus proper and Pachyrhinosaurus. I choose Pachyrhinosaurus as it is among my top favourite dinos and there have already been tons of pictures of Centrosaurus in floods.

Admittedly I am not totally pleased with the baseline colouring I gave this Pachyrhino, but I did figure that out till I was headlong into putting the model into my flood!

So having a 3D Dinosaur model is only a part of the battle. Next came the long process of duplicating multiple animals from the original, tweaking and individualizing them, posing them, and finally repositioning these in relation to the picture.

This was a whole day endeavour. Some of my effort is obvious, and is easily seen. Such as my remodeling a young "monoclonius" version of a Pachyrhino (which looked like identical to other juvenile Centrosaurids when their young).

Some of my tweaks were not so clear. For example if you pay close attention to each animal they're all slightly different lengths and sizes, and their horns are differently sized and arranged. I think this isn't obvious as every animal is identical in colouring, as I didn't have time to make new shaders for each animal. I think if I had made slight changes to each of their colouration these horn and size differences would have been emphasised rather than hidden.

Regardless, here was the poses and positions I ended up with. However without more work the picture was far from realistic looking so far. Dinosaurs that were underwater were still completely visible. None of them were casting any shadows either, which is a key element for compositing to look real!

So next I constructed a "shadow catcher" set for the photo. A shadow catcher is pretty much what it's name implies, it is an object in my 3D program that "catches" the calculated shadows of objects I'm rendering as per the lighting settings in the scene. At the same time they don't block or cover up the background, merely project a shadow onto it. You can see my shadowcatcher objects in the 3D window screen shot I included before, they are the grey rectangles the Pachyrhinos are standing on or swimming through.

Though this may sound and look easy, but it was actually quite time consuming. You aren't building the set from scratch. Rather you're having to recreate and mimic the angles and placement of preset positions determined by the background photo, or as they call it in the biz the "plate".

With my shadowcatchers in place I was nearly there. However the Dinosaurs were lacking excitement and interaction with the water, and the herd up on top of the hill was floating above trees that were clearly supposed to be in front of them. (Shadowcatchers are insanely time consuming to build for trees and other none straight objects).

So I went in and photoshopped the forest back in front of the waiting Pachyrhinos, and added splashes around the swimming ones.

Giving me this as my end product.

It's not perfect, but it could have been a lot worse too.

My main regret is the lack of animals. I'd have like 3-5 times as many. Maybe when I have more time (yeah right! there's a dream commodity) I'll retry.

So the new story is the back or front end of the herd arrives at the river where the banks are too steep to descend safely, minus one gentle slope. The majority of the animals take this single safe path to the water. However on the sides we see inexperienced youngsters risking the steep hills with varying degrees of success.

I hope this "making of" has been useful to you.

The Ceratopsians Gallery

Welcome to the first ever ART Evolved internet art carnival! Here on known as a gallery, or as per the theme of this site a "time-capsule".

We are proud to present the contributions of not only the new ART Evolved blogging team, but also submissions from many other palaeontology enthusiasts.

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Now as this is our first ever such gallery, and strict deadlines and/or cut offs would take the fun out of all this (as this is supposed to be nothing but fun!), we will be accepting and posting late entries whenever they should turn up. So be sure to check back every now and then to see what new pieces have popped up.

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Also for those of you who wish to add something to the so far rather impressive collection (which should only be made more impressive with your entry) you still can! Send them to artevolved@gmail.com with a title and desired text blurb, and we'll get them up as soon as we can!

So the Ceratopsians. To start off with they were of course Dinosaurs, a family from the Ornithischian branch of the Dinosaurian lineage.

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The Ceratopsians are most famous for many of their later members having impressive eye and nose horns coupled with spectacularly large shield-like frills. This was not always the case, and many did not have the horns and/or the frill. They all however had beaks which were a special bone called a rostral at the front of their jaw that no other animal has ever had! This is the key feature unifying the Ceratopsians, and the one palaeontologists use to i dentify them.

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Ceratopsians are generally thought of to have been herbivores, but a few scientists have recently suggesting there is a chance some of them were omnivores... Meaning there could be a major overhaul on how we view these animals if they are right!

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The Ceratopsians had a fairly late start for a major group of Dinosaurs at around 175-170 million years ago in the mid-Jurassic, but they lasted till the very end of the Dinosaurs reign 65 million years ago. They started off clearly in Asia, but as time progressed they radiated into North America, and possibly into Gondwana (Australia and South America have very partial Ceratopsian-like remains, but not enough to be certain one way or another).

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So let us now look into this time capsule from the Mesozoic to see what could have been...

Styracosaurus by Manabu Sakamoto

Pachyrhinosaurus by Nima Sassani

There is no real consensus on what this monsterlooked like, but one popular theory suggests that the huge bony terraceon its nose was the base of a huge horn or group of horns make ofkeratin - there's no evidence of the actualy horns, but if they were real, it would look like a Tyrannosaur's worst nightmare. The Royal Tyrell museum of Alberta has two statues of the speculative mega-horned Pachyrhinosaurus, so I decided to just go wild with this one and NOT stick to only the bones.

Styracosaurs by Angie Rodrigues

Styracosaurus by Nima Sassani

I drew this herd of Styracosaurus albertensis for thenewest issue of Prehistoric Times, which should be out soon. This isonly on an 8.5 x 11" paper and it took almost a month. A starkly patterned male faces down a predator (yeah, it's YOU!) while the rest of the clan heads to the river.

Centrosaurus by Manabu Sakamoto

Nine Centrosaurine Skulls Mo Hassan

The centrosaurines form a subfamily of the Ceratopsidae. Most have ornate, fenestrated frills, and the skulls are all fairly well-known. Albertaceratops is the most recently discovered, with beasts like Styracosaurus being relatively well-known amongst dinosaur fans.

"Grond" the Pachyrhino by Scott Elyard

A lovely Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis. It's name is taken from the pages of Tolkien, a reference that is quite appropriate indeed.

Skeletal Triceratops by Peter Bond

Psittacosaur Skeleton by Sean Craven

Psittacosaur Fleshed Out by Sean Craven

The Perfect Dinner! by Traumador the Tyrannosaur

In his piece of "modern art", the world's smallest (and most alive!) T-Rex gives us a theropod's point of view on the horned dinosaurs. Not really all that unexpected I guess.

Einiosaurus growth series by Zach Miller

The juvenile is based on Brachyceratops montanensis (Gilmore, 1917), and the subadult is, of course, a modified Monoclonius lowei (Sternberg, 1940). The adult is based mostly on Sampson (1995) but parts (mostly the frill) are taken from Carpenter (in Dodson, 1996). Species thanks go out to Andrew Farke for checking my work and sending me a ton of papers about centrosaurine ontogenetic development.

Now, let's talk about the piece itself. I was interested in showing a growth series of a centrosaurine ceratopsid because, frankly, they go through some significant changes.

Einiosaurus barely goes through anything compared to Pachyrhinosaurus, of course (Currie, et al. 2008). Awhile back, I remember seeing a painting of a drowning centrosaurine that was described as a "new species of Styracosaurus." I realize now that it was Einiosaurus, but the painting was from long ago. I could've sworn it was in the old Dinosaurs: Past and Present series, but I looked through both volumes and couldn't find the picture.

Einiosaurus is interesting it seems to represent the second step in a transitional series between Styracosaurus albertensis and Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis. Scott Sampson suggests that the encroachment of the Bearpaw Sea sparked a bit of an evolutionary revolution among Alberta and Montana's residents, including tyrannosaurs and hadrosaurs.

The picture is also something of an achievement for me in that, aside from the initial sketches, everything you see here is digitally created with the help of my laptop, Wacom Bamboo "Fun" tablet, and Scott Elyard. The colors were unbelievably hard to decide on. In fact, the keen observer will note a complete lack of hue on the necks, because I couldn't decide on a good companion color the head maroon heads.

In addition to the growth (and reabsorbtion) of the horns and spikes, I've darkened the colors of the beak and horny sheaths as the animal ages. Were I to rework this picture in the future, I'd put some color on the necks and maybe toss a light background color in there. Ah, work for another day, I suppose.

References:

Gilmore, C. W. (1917). Brachyceratops, a ceratopsian dinosaur from the Two Medicine Formation of Montana with notes on associated reptiles. US Geological Survey Professional Paper 103: 1-45.

Sternberg, C. M. (1940). Ceratopsidae from Alberta. Journal of Paleontology 14: 468-480.

Sampson, S. (1995). Two new horned dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana; with a phylogenetic analysis of the Centrosaurinae (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 15: 743-760.

Dodson, P. (1996). The Horned Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey.

Currie, P. J. Langston, Jr., W., & Tanke, D. H. (2008). A New Horned Dinosaur From an Upper Cretaceous Bone Bed in Alberta. NRC Research Press: Ottawa, Canada.

Tug-o-War Duel by Craig Dylke

Inspired by the recent theory that the short frilled centrosaurids likely did not use their nasal horns in combat (unlike the long frilled chasmosaurids), here we have a pair of male Styracosaurus albertensis locking their frill horns and pulling against each other in a show of strength.

Though the recent paper purposing the difference between the two families suggests that the centrosaurids probably just competed against each other visually, I took the liberty of guessing an alternate route the Styracosaurus may have gone due to the crazy number of horns protruding off its head! You'll also note my conjectural quill projections on their tails inspired by Psittacosaurus'.

This piece was built entirely in 3D (forest and Dinosaurs), and than run through a rendering filter called TOON. The idea was to get a cartoon looking picture. The results aren't what I wanted at all, and I'm aiming play with it some more, but it was neat so I threw it in anyway.

Centrosaurus apertus by Peter Bond

Pachyrhinosaurus by Scott Elyard

 

Triceratops by Raven Amos

This curious critter was among the last of the great dinosaurs before the K-T extinction, and probably one of the world's most familiar, indeed synonymous with the word "dinosaur" to the average person. A great muscled hulk that seems part parrot, part angry, scaly cow, with a curious array of weaponry and sheilding. Apart from the large bony frill that did well at protecting the herbivore's jugular, Triceratops also sported several hard, bony scutes, impressions of which have been found in some fossil formations. 

Protoceratops by Sean Craven

Reunion by Mark Ryan

Two former foes from Montana meet again for the first time in 65 million years for a classic Cretaceous confrontation. (Science Museum of Minnesota, AMNH).

Introducing Sara Chasm by Glendon Mellow

Oil and digital, 2009. Title and concept inspired by Chasmosaurus, one of the ceratopsians. Glendon has blogged on the 'making of' this piece here.

Mud Bath by Zach Miller

A long time ago, when I was still doing steady work for the Alaska Museum of Natural History (it's rare now), I was asked to draw two cartoony pictures showing how an Alaskan dinosaur might make produce a fossil skin impression. A short flurry of concepts resulted in this happy little Pachyrhinosaurus taking a mud bath. The picture was never used, unfortunately, but it remains one of my personal favorites.

Agujaceratops by Ville Sinkkonen

Centrosaurine Phylogeny by Mo Hassan

This diagram shows the current thinking of the relationships between the members of the Centrosaurinae. There are two clear groups, and two that don't fit in. Avaceratops is believed to be the most basal member of this subfamily.

Chasmosaurus by Angie Rodrigues

Psittacosaur Creche by James Robins

Styracosaurus by Manabu Sakamoto

Protoceratops by Marek Eby

Psittacosaur by Raven Amos

While there is no direct evidence (and little supporting evidence) that Psittacosaurus sibiricus was either a) a quadraped or b) a digging animal, there is this fascinating proto-ceratopsid with a knobby skull, reminiscint of the warthogs of modern Africa, who do indeed dig mud wallows and root for tubers and roots. And with new evidence supporting that these dinosaurs were more "rotund" than previously hypothesized, the image sticks in my mind of this little pig-bodied, parrot-beaked reptile, studiously pawing the Early Cretaceous subtropical regions that are now Western Siberia, in search of roots, tubers, or a place in the mud to cool off.

Triceratops on the Beach by Peter Bond

Einiosaurus skull by Zach Miller

The adult bull began life as a skull restoration, as do most of my dinosaur drawings. The squamosal-parietal contact isn't exactly right, which I tried to fix in the final version.

Notice, of course, that the fossil skulls lack horns between the anterior base of the nasal horn and the rostrum. I tossed a "rostral comb" in because I figured that horn growth wouldn't just stop when the male reached a certain age. In modern horned ungulates, the horns keep growing throughout life. In dall sheep, the horns keep spiraling until death.

My philosophy with centrosaurines is that horn growth would continue like a sort of plague, with bumps and spikes appearing in more and more places with age, hence the little Pachyrhinosaurus-like triple spike on the center of the parietal.

Pipestone Crossing by Craig Dylke

A herd of Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai hit a fateful obstacle when they try to get across a flooding river. Some would survive, some would not. The rest is, well, shall we say Prehistory...

This piece was a two step effort. The first was creating the flood waters in an otherwise tranquil picture of a river bed. With the new raging river in place, ten 3D rendered Dinosaurs then had to be posed and positioned in relation to the photo, and than have splashs and trees composited back over top of them to integrate all the elements together.

Watch for a making of it here on ART Evolved in a week's time!

Diabloceratops eatoni by David Tana

Diabloceratops eatoni, a recently discovered/described centrosaurine from the Late Cretaceous of Utah. Pen and color pencil on paper.

Protoceratops by Vasika Udurawane

That sadly does it for our first time-capsule. Yet do not fear. We are opening a new one in two months time. So not only be sure to check back on May. 1st, but also please consider...

Set your pencils, pens, markers/felts, pencil crayons, charcoal, pastels, paints and brushes, clay, metal, pipe cleaners, paper mache, and/or computers to the task of recreating one of the most interesting and bizarre relatives of all us modern day mammals. The Synapsids, aka the proto-mammals, mammal-like reptiles, or stem-mammals.

We shall be putting up a post in a couple weeks time to help you out with some ideas of not only what sorts of animals were in this group, but also how palaeo-artists have previously tackled them.

Can't wait to see your submissions for it!