The Plates or Armour Vote post

As many have noticed we have still yet to get up the Plates and Armour poll. Well despite our best efforts Blogger refuses to let us create a poll at moment. After dozens of attempts (I'm really sick of typing it all out for the record!) we just can not get this rather vaguely identified error to go away (it claims we haven't completed the poll form... which every time we have!).

So rather than make you all wait, we are going to set up this official vote post. Sorry to everyone who cast a vote elsewhere, but could we please get you to recast your vote here. At moment votes are spread over at least three different posts, and we don't want anyone's choice to get lost. So if you could please cast your vote again here in this post's comment section.

For those of you how missed it, the topic of this vote is whether our next gallery should be Plates or Armour?

Plates- The Stegosaurs

Armour- The Ankylosaurs

Rare Marine Treat on Symbiartic

For the month of September over on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network, my co-blogger and I decided to present a different example of science-art every day.

Today is Craig Dylke's beautiful, quiet, floating-in-blue, A Rare Marine Treat.

© Craig Dylke

Head over, Like on Facebook and comment!  And you can find all of the SciArt of the Day so far here, and follow us on Twitter @symbiartic.

(Thanks Craig for being game to appear on Symbiartic!)

-Glendon Mellow

New Submssions to Pop Culture

We've had a few late submissions to the Pop Culture Gallery 2. Be sure to pop in and check out the new pieces!!!

 

Also be sure to vote in our Plates or Armour poll (on the sidebar) to determine the next gallery's theme...

Vote on the winter gallery: Armour or Plates

Myself and Peter have hit a brickwall on the topic for the next gallery. We were thinking it is time for another Dinosaur theme. This brought us to groups we haven't done before, and two prominent leaders came to the forefront:

 

The Stegosaurs

 

 

 

and the Ankylosaurs

Both are fun, different, but yet similar. So rather than make the choice ourselves we thought we'd have one of our ever popular polls.

So please pick whether you want plates or armour for the next gallery on the sidebar...

Dave Hone on Palaeo-art

Dr. Dave Hone has put up a great little post about palaeo-art on the Guardians website. It also includes the art of long time ART Evolved friend Matt van Rooijen. While I suggest reading the whole thing, I grabbed a small snippet that I thought was of particular relevance to people on this site.

Dave Hone discussing his take on how people can get into palaeo-art. A very honest, and I think accurate assessment.

As for how people get into the field, well this naturally varies. I know of artists who were working as technical illustrators for scientists and were in a position to have a go at the odd life reconstruction and things went from there, there have been wildlife illustrators who were drafted in because they could do animals properly, "normal" artists who found a flair for it or drove themselves into the field, and those who simply got a call out of the blue and asked if they fancied trying their hand at dinosaurs.

Increasingly though, thanks to the internet we're seeing ever more people being able to gather information on palaeoart and prehistoric animals, get feedback from researchers and push their art in front of those who might pay for it. Where even 10 years ago it was probably hard to get anyone outside of the ranks of publishers and researchers to have heard of you, or seen what you can do, it's becoming ever easier to mail prospective clients and send them a link to your online portfolio and have people share that information.

This is great for those wanting to break into the field, but naturally it has brought tension too. Most researchers have enough on their plates without having to deal with detailed requests for help on tyrannosaur or abelisaur anatomy and while I know of few researchers who would turn such a request down flat, one does occasionally get most unreasonable requests. Moreover, there are now dozens, perhaps hundreds, of budding artists working out their dinosaurs and mammoths and trilobites online and offering their services to researchers and museums just for the chance to have something of theirs used.

The 2nd Pop Culture Gallery

Happy September everyone! 
After our first three-month gap between galleries, we bring you the next gathering of stunning artwork - all about the fusion of prehistoric critters and pop culture!  We had so much fun the first go around, it's time for our 2nd Pop Culture Gallery!

 If you would like to add your art to these talented folk, simply send Art Evolved your work and we will add it to this gallery!  Our address is artevolved@gmail.com.

Without further ado, ART Evolved's 2nd Pop Culture Gallery.

PLEASE Click on each to ENLARGE them:

 Alien Raptor by Yul AltolaguirreZancajo

-->

--> The Raptor Alien, also known as the Raptor Xenomorph, is a Xenomorph spawned from theropod dinosaurs like the dromaeosaurids.

 

 

 The Eleventh Doctor Riding a Brachylophosaurus by Harrison Cooper

 

 

 Tweet Tweet by the Doctor Smnt2000

Not all canaries are pretty... Starring Teratophoenus as Tweety's grandpa

See more of his awesome work on his blog here.

 

 Andrewsarchus Does Everyone A Favour! by James Appleby

 

 Claws of War by Craig Dylke

 

 

 Dapper Raptor by Peter Bond

Revision of Disney's Dinosaur... by Trish Arnold

Perry the Castorocauda by Albertonykus

Did I just reference Dinosaur Revolution and Phineas and Ferb at the same time? Yes, yes I did.

For those unfamiliar with one or both of the references, the song is a parody of Perry the Platypus's theme song from Phineas and Ferb. The events depicted are modified from a sequence from the Discovery Channel documentary-drama-comedy-thing show Dinosaur Revolution where the near-mammal Castorocauda escapes from a pair of the basal tyrannosauroid Guanlong after spraying them with (entirely speculative) skunk-like musk.

Also, this will probably make more sense now.



My Little Maniraptor by Albertonykus

I'll deny everything.

First though, some assorted observations I noted while doing this:
-Plausible explanation for eyelashes: ground hornbills have them.

-Isn't it ironic for a small ceratopsian to have a crush on an oviraptorosaur?

-Applejack is farming a close Mesozoic relative of modern custard apples.

-I figured that dresses would be pretty superfluous for sapient maniraptors when you already have candy-colored feathers growing out of your hands and tail. Here Rarity is instead an expert on feather maintenance. Her mannequins have detachable feathers that can be replaced, so she can do designs based on the many different color schemes of her customers. She probably does design some clothing as well, but I suspect sapient maniraptors wouldn't wear anything much more extravagant than a cloak, like Trixie does.

-How do you show a female maniraptor is a tomboy? She's (the most) colorful. Incidentally, her color scheme appears to suggest that she leaves a triple quadruple(!) rainbow in her wake at top speed.

-I couldn't find a way to fit a crown on Celestia's head. I suppose if you have a huge crest on your head a crown becomes superfluous.

A revisit to"The Planet of the Dinosaurs" by Santino Mazzei

 "Elvisaurus" by Santino Mazzei

We hope you have enjoyed our second go round with pop culture creatures!  If you want to join in the fun, send your work to artevolved@gmail.com.

Stay tuned for our announcement of the next gallery in December (which will be quite dinosaurian in topic! :)

Reviews of Dinosaur Art the book

Hopefully you've all heard about the upcoming Dinosaur Art: The World’s Greatest Paleoart book. If not it is looking like THE book on palaeo-art by the modern greats.

Dave Hone posts his thoughts on the book here, and Brian Switek has a short review here.

We are hopefully soon going to do our own review of the book in the next week or two, depending on how the postal system goes. So stay tuned for a palaeo-artist take on this volume here on ART Evolved soon...

Velociraptor Mongoliensis: 1:1 Sculpture

Hello All,

My name is Nicholas Fonseca. I am new to Art Evolved, and I am excited to share my first post.

I am sharing with you my life reconstruction of Velociraptor mongoliensis.

I based this reconstruction on photos and dimensions of the "Fighting Dinosaur" Specimen: GI 100/25.

I wanted to create an image of Velociraptor as animal not a movie monster. Too many times dinosaurs, and Velociraptor in particular are portrayed jaws agape in a ferocious leap onto prey. I chose instead to pose this animal crouching over a nest of its eggs. I feel this creates a naturalistic view of Velociraptor, as an animal that not only needs to hunt prey "or hapless scientists" but also to rear its young thus ensuring the survival of it's genetic progeny.

Enjoy!

 

Sculptors of Beijing's Dinosaur Park

As promised here is one of the many palaeo-art related gems I encountered on my Chinese expedition. I thought I'd start on a light hearted and more comedic entry, and the Beijing Natural History Museum's Dinosaur Park fits that bill perfectly.

Overall the Natural History Museum in its public halls and galleries is a fantastic kids museum, and is a lot of fun. The quality of the casts in the skeleton hall are not of a good enough grade to satisfy a hardcore technical palaeo-nut, would be my only warning. I frankly loved it, and it held up a good hour long visit (as the signs were all in Chinese, and my wife wanted to push on our day this was all I could afford, but it was just the right amount I'd say unless you can read characters).

In the basement of the museum though is a series of three themed rooms filled with the most fun and silly Dinosaur display I've seen in a while. I'll let the pictures tell most of the story, but in a nutshell what I loved about all the models you are about to see is that none of them were robots. All of them were giant static statues, that felt more like giant action figures from my childhood than something that should be in a museum. That's exactly what they were in a sense, copies of the bad dollar store Dinosaurs we 80 kids all used to get. I suspect the sculptors were provided such toys directly from the factories that produced those toys as their references (I could be wrong, but that's what they felt like).

David Hone covered two of the highlights of this display here and here, but upon visiting I found several more that I had to share.



By Unknown Sculptor
If you know who this artist was though could you please let us know so we can properly credit their work

 The only technically correct thing about the exhibit was this nice welcoming sign.
(Blogger's photo captioning suddenly won't work for me here, so all these sculptors are credited to their unknown artist, and as usual please let me know should you happen to know who their creator was)

I totally owned a small version of this guy! Apart from being a 100 times larger and badly painted this was a weird flash of nostalgia for me...

This has to be the happiest victim herbivorous Dinosaur in the history of victim plant eaters. 

 This guy feels like he is out of an old skool painting.

A nice collection of (inaccurate) Chinese Sauropods.

 This combo had to be the single best highlight of the whole "Park". The demonic theropod about to chow down on a cartoon smiling Sauropod.

Dr. Who and the Phylopics Panic!!!

I had an unexpected surprise this morning while checking my Facebook. Someone had posted this digital poster on Dr. Thomas Holtz's wall for an upcoming Dr. Who episode.

By James Gray

Now for most people the excitement would be over everyone's favourite immortal time traveller taking on Dinosaurs (a second time, hopefully this time will be a lot better than the first time in the 70's :P).

However for me there was an immediate huge distraction about the poster. The Dinosaur shadow menacing the Doctor was one of the silhouettes I had created for Phylopic... Now I have no problem with its use here, as it is free domain on Phylopics (though I'd always only anticipated its use by researchers). The real question I had was this an official promotion by the BBC or not. As let's face it that would be some real boasting rights to be part of an official Dr. Who printed teaser (even if they had a legitimate reason not to pay me).

While it looked real enough, it turns out to fan art by artist James Gray. Oh well. It did the trick of getting that episode firmly entrenched in my head as one I have to see.




By myself (Craig Dylke)
It is freely avaliable copyright free at Phylopics here.

This very brief "incident" left me reflecting on my involvement in Phylopics for a couple minutes though. I've been very actively promoting and encouraging people to make images for the site. Yet this poster demonstrated it wasn't just scientists who might use the images freely available on the site. It is open to everyone.

When I initially got involved in Phylopics and promoted it, I'd only honestly envisioned researchers and science workers using the images. Yes that was dumb of me, but today I had a low level reality check. Anyone and everyone could use those images. Was this something I wanted or should be encouraging others to do?

Of course this was a dumb (but sadly predictable) knee jerk reaction. The whole point of Phylopics is that anyone who wants access to scientifically accurate (silhouetted) images can now have access to them for free. I'd rather non-science parties using and accessing these accurate free images rather than producing or acquiring inadequate material to further muddy the waters!

So yes, among these users might be TV/Movie producers, book publishers, and/or museums. Yes in an ideal world I would rather these sorts of parties have to pay and/or at least credit me. However at the end of the day the images in question are just a silhouettes. They really are not that hard to make for us or these various parties. I'd rather they take correct ones from a credible source, instead of them drawing up their own with (probably) less of an eye for accuracy.

Also as silhouettes they are of very limited use to most people. This Doctor Who poster demonstrates the one function this Albertosaur will be to an illustrator, as a shadow... James Gray couldn't ever extend this to show the Dinosaur itself. At least not without infringing on my other images copyrights (so in a sense this is a great means of encouraging people to get my other images and pay me. You know if the world worked like make belief :P... also you know if he wasn't infringing on the BBC's Doctor Who copyrights too...)

The only functional use these silhouettes is as a simplistic diagnostic diagram. Yes books, shows, and movies use these all the time. Yes they could use them from Phylopic. Yes they could do so without paying the artists who created them (though I think some of the licences do require them to at least credit them). Yet at the end of the day these aren't the money making images in any of these media. No one is going to buy the book because of the silhouette pictures comparing a human's size to a Dinosaur's in the corner of the article. No one is going to buy the movie because of the technical readout that pops up on the computer for a moment when Mr. Spock is briefing the crew on the carnivores of Dinosaur Planet.

So why freak out about it? (This question being addressed as much to my momentary paranoid self as to you the reader). Yes pick your battles, and fight them hard. Just make sure you know what the battles are about. Phylopics is a different battle than breaking out as an artist. It is about science outreach and empowerment. We can't hope to get more paying science art gigs if scientists can't communicate or getting their research out there.

Phylopics is a great way to quickly and easily contribute free art to scientists that doesn't take a lot of your time, and that would be of very limited commerical use by itself. Yes other non-science parties might use, but who cares. Really that is a bonus getting out correct visual information. I still stand by Phylopics and its mission. I still stick to it mostly benefiting science and researchers. I just have to acknowledge there could be some more use by nonexpected parties than what I was originally advertising to everyone.

So still please consider making some silhouettes for Phylopics today. Just keep in mind how they might get used in addition to science. I still think it is worth the trade off!

Julio Lacerda the Causal Paleoartist

Another great palaeo-artist with a blog is Julio Lacerda. I've been following him awhile, but just embarrassingly realized there has been no noise or commotion made about his efforts here on AE.


By Julio Laceria

So be sure to go check out his great art and well explained posts about his work here.