Beasts of the Grand Staircase!

This Wednesday, October 11, is National Fossil Day in the US, during which science organizations around the country hold paleontology outreach events. The National Park Service and partner organizations are holding a major Fossil Day event on the National Mall in Washington, DC. To see what events are happening near you, see the list from Sarah Gibson at PLOS Paleo Community (parts one and two).

Just over a week ago, I was contacted by David Polly, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, to design some Fossil Day outreach materials. The SVP wanted to commission a set of trading cards highlighting six amazing dinosaur discoveries at Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. I was thrilled to get the gig and pitched the idea of doing something colorful, graphic, and fun. Dr. Polly had a list of taxa in mind, so I started sketching. A few days later, the art was given the thumbs up and the cards went into production! This was one of the quickest project turnarounds I've ever worked on, and I'm totally pleased with the end result.

"Beasts of the Grand Staircase" trading cards, designed by David Orr of Blue Aster Studio for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Photo by David Polly.

This project was special for a few reasons. First of all, this was the first time I was commissioned by the SVP to create something, and that's something of a dream come true. Second, ceratopsids are a heck of a lot of fun to draw, and this set was half ceratopsid! Third, I was very happy to draw Utahceratops gettyi; many of you may already know that the species' namesake, Mike Getty, passed away tragically a few weeks ago. I never had the chance to meet him, but I've appreciated the fond tributes from folks in the paleontology community whose life he impacted. And finally, the protection of public lands is an issue close to my heart, and they are in peril. We need to raise up a grassroots effort to defend these precious places.

Thank you to Dr. Polly for bringing me aboard this outreach effort. Learn more information about the DC event on the SVP news page. The SVP is also distributing a flyer I designed featuring the card art for all to share. Have a great National Fossil Day, everyone!

Sauropoda Coat of Arms

Long-time readers may remember that five years or so ago, I created a collection of dinosaur family crests. They proved to be a decent seller in my shop. Eventually, I decided to retire them, along with some other design collections, to keep the designs in my shop more current. But I always intended to revisit the idea, and now I am.

The first of the new line is dedicated to the great thunder beasts of Sauropoda, featuring Brontosaurus rampant. It's available in my shop on a wide variety of merch. Purchases are always appreciated, of course, but at this time they'll be especially helpful in our efforts to move to WordPress.

Sauropoda Coat of Arms © David Orr

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and look forward to filling up the collection. I've begun figuring out Thyreophora, and after that will likely be Ornithopoda. And I suppose Theropoda will be coming down the pike. Stinkin' theropods. They'll be added to the collection at Redbubble, which can be accessed by this direct link.

One last thing: I would be remiss not to mention that Rebecca Groom does some absolutely delightful heraldic designs, including her Yi qi, currently available.

Ask me about...

I enjoy wearing my love of prehistory on my sleeve (I'm wearing my Raven Amos Ichthyovenator as I type and my Rebecca Groom Microraptor just arrived in the post). For one, it's fun just to have some amazing paleoart on my shirt. But it's also because it may invite a conversation from a fellow paleo-enthusiast or just a curious outsider.

Recently while I brainstormed ideas for new design sets for my shop, it struck me that it would be cool to just come out and tell people that it's fun to talk about natural history. So the "Ask me about..." series was born, featuring simple, (hopefully) charismatic illustrations of prehistoric critters.

These initial four designs are now available in my shop, on various colors and styles of tees and hoodies and other merchandise. A "bird evolution" version is in the works, and from there I think I'll move out to explore other facets of natural history.

New Valentine Design!

Well, Cupid is getting ready to step up to the plate, so best to start thinking about how you're going to tell twelve people - or any other multiple of twelve - how much they mean to you. To that end I've drawn a valentine with a dinosaur on it, based on a great little one-liner thought up by my life partner, spouse, and BFF, Jennie.



but what about that odd multiples of twelve bit up above? Well, you can actually purchase this card with three other designs - by Randall Munroe, Zach Weinersmith, and Rosemary Mosco no less - in a set of twelve. So whether the objects of your affection fancy planetary physics, entomology, parasitology, or palaeontology, you are covered. Pick 'em up from the XKCD store!

A redesign for 2015

With a new year comes a new design for LITC, keeping up with our roughly two year schedule for such things. I decided to go in a pop art direction this time around, after playing with different treatments, all centered around the new logo design. That logo, as revealed a few weeks back, is a sort of "back-to-basics" approach which places a big-headed chasmosaurine in a heart. When working on the header, I liked the idea of using multi-colored, comics-inspired panels and it worked nicely with a cropped detail of our new chasmosaur mascot. If you're reading this on a feed reader, hop on over to the blog site itself to see the design in its bright and shiny glory.


As announced last month, I've finally made some blog-specific merchandise featuring the new logo, available in pink and black or in all white. Both versions are available on a wide variety of products, from garments to mugs to device skins and cases. All proceeds from these items will go to support our activities: purchasing books, visiting museums, and possible future web-hosting related costs.

A beautiful LITC mug! I swear, that's what it is, even though the handle isn't visible.

A snazzy LITC shirt!

Thanks for all of the support you've given us over the first five years of LITC, and here's looking forward to many more!

The March of the Dinosprites

Last week I shared some pixel art dinosaurs I was working on and said I'd been continuing them as a series. It's a fun little project to kick off 2015, with a new one shared every Friday, and added to my Redbubble shop as well. I've decided to call the series Dinosprites, because it seems like a pretty catchy name.



I'll mainly be sharing this at Facebook and Twitter, but I'll probably post the full series here in a few months when this series is complete.

Dragon Tongues

I recently had the pleasure of being commissioned to create a new logo for the Dragon Tongues podcast, and since I'll take any opportunity to share relevant work from my livelihood at LITC, here it is.



Dragon Tongues is the creation of Sean Willett, and it's highly recommended if you haven't had the chance to hear it. As luck would have it, Sean and I were both fans of each other's work, and the process was a lot of fun from start to finish. We met via a video chat (the future is truly here, isn't it?) and hashed out some basic ideas. Besides the need for the work to stand out on the iTunes podcast browser, I knew that it needed to have an aaspect of intimacy to it. Sean does an incredible job recording and producing his podcast, with the result feeling like you're an audience of one, listening to an expert storyteller.

That sense of intimacy and a respect for scientific and natural history were guiding lights as I developed a few different ideas. All involved Megalosaurus in some way, to honor its important role in early dinosaur paleontology. Of theses ideas, Sean was smitten with the design you see here, featuring a juvenile and parent megalosaur in front of a mountain range that bears a strong resemblance to a certain iconic fossil.

Anyhow, go listen to the show! Visit the official website, find it on iTunes, follow Sean and the show on Twitter, and pick up a tee shirt at Redbubble.

Oddly enough, I have another commission for a soon-to-be-announced paleontology podcast I'm really excited to hear, and to share here. Stay tuned!

The Unfeathered Bird in the Time of Jersey Boys

Another shamelessly indulgent post which I nevertheless hope is made up for in sheer geekery. On the last day of his visit to London, Chris DiPiazza of Jersey Boys Hunt Dinosaurs met up with Marc and I once again at the Grant Museum of Zoology, where we were also joined by none other than Katrina van Grouw, the brilliant artist and author of The Unfeathered Bird, a book which has not only been mentioned by us many times, but which every reader of this blog should be in possession of by now (and if not, I recommend rectifying the situation post-haste!).

From left: Katrina, Marc, Chris, and me

The Society of Palaeontology Fanciers

I have this compulsion that occasionally rises up, demands attention, prompts feverish work, and subsides until it sees fit to return. I am compelled to design the kinds of paleontology-inspired apparel, stickers, and whatnot that I'd like to wear. I'm kind of picky when it comes to graphic shirts, you see, and when I visit a big museum I'm always hoping that they'll have designs than hit me in my sweet spot. Let's call it graphic simplicity. If you've been hanging around here, you may remember me sharing such designs here in the past - I Left My Heart in a Prehistoric Age, Dinosaur Hearts, and of course the set of minimalist family crests that I came to call Cladistic Heraldry.

If this kind of stuff hits your sweet spot too, well, I've got some damn splendid news. I recently created a set of designs and I think they're pretty nice. I call the set The Society of Palaeontology Fanciers, and like the other projects I mentioned above, it gives to the chance to proclaim your allegiances to extinct taxa to the whole world.



These are all seven of the first batch. The impetus for the set came when I was doodling, and started playing with minimalistic renderings of stem-birds. I have to say that as I worked on the design above, of a vaguely deinonychosaurish animal, it was freeing to not to have its damned arms sticking out. When it comes to artistic renderings of animals closely related to modern birds, I find I am less and less satisfied with artists staying close to skeletal contours. In my doodling, I came to challenge myself to find a way to an iconic rendering of just such an animal. I didn't want it to be easily confused with a modern bird; or if it was on first glance, I want it to inspire a double take. Once I felt that I'd achieved it, I was in full-throttle design mode and I played with various non-avian dinosaur forms. Each took on a life of its own. One of the fun challenges of these sets I like to do is to resolve drastically differently scaled animals into a cohesive series. Once my dinosaurs were done, I was compelled to do a trilobite, specifically the Cambrian Oryctocephalus.

I'm flattered by the fact that when I do projects like this I get a lot of "do such and such!" or "what about whatchamataxon?" comments. I certainly want to do more. Before I do any more for extinct critters, however, I'm working on a set in hopes of doing a tiny bit to help extant raptors from going extinct. These I hope to realize as genuine embroidered patches which will be sold in the Indiana Raptor Center's new gift shop, and maybe down the line I could even have the capital to make patches of my paleontology designs, as well.

Anyhow, if you're moved to pick up a shirt or two, these are available in the base colors above, as white designs on dark colored shirts, or as black designs on light colored shirts, so no matter your preferred style and color, there should be something to your liking.

Subtle Frontiers: Observations in Urban Ecology

Banner designs for the exhibition of my thesis project.

As recently promised, the website I created as my MFA thesis in graphic design is now available. Please check it out and learn about the ecology of my yard.

My thesis work was focused on me "planting my flag" as a designer: what is important to me? What work is most pressing? What do I want to do? It was clear from the outset that I would focus on a topic concerning nature. I had the idea to explore the idea of a designer playing the role of naturalist. Then followed a month of exploration and ideation exercises. During September, I tried to figure out what my subject matter should be. At this point, I thought I might present a number of different pieces each demonstrating a different visual approach to natural history. I spent hours hiking or simply sitting in some of my local naure preserves and state parks.

As I journaled and explored what was most important to me, I began to lean strongly toward doing something that worked against some of our popular notions of nature. I looked at the way the experience of nature is marketed. Often, we see images of conquest and achievement, grand and remote vistas. I wanted to focus on the intimate and common and show how surprising and profoundly complex it can be. Using my own documentation of the plant and animal life I encounter every day in my own yard, I began developing an interactive piece that allows users to "explore" the space, learning about some of my favorite (or least favorite) organisms.

As my goal was one of further developing my identity as a designer and expressing what I find valuable about the familiar nature I'm surrounded by, I put all of my time and effort into research, illustration, writing copy, and visual design of the site and the interactive graphic. This unfortunately left no time to learn to code. The site is currently best viewed on a laptop of desktop; as long as you have a recent version of Flash player, you'll be good. Subtle Frontiers is a first step, and I am next embarking on some coding self-education. In the coming months, I'll be coding the entire site from bottom up, with tablet and mobile versions. Once that is done, I'll launch a blog and begin creating new content for the site.

Let me know if you find the Mesozoic fauna that somehow found its way into my backyard...

Dinosaur Hearts

I just rolled out some new designs in my Redbubble shop.



The four designs are available on clothing in the colors above. They were driven both by my obsessive need to distill dinosaur forms down to their barest essence as well as my love for a particular trope in dinosaur kitsch I remember being part of my earliest collection of dinosaur paraphernalia, including a pair of pajamas: simple patterns of primary and secondary-colored dinosaurs. My love of this simple motif has inspired me before. This 1.5" badge is a terrific example of the style.



And in my mind, the classic Mold-A-Rama souvenirs were kin to them, even if their monochrome nature was an inherent part of the technology.


Photo by S. Cassatt, via Flickr.

For the life of me, I can't find any images of the pajamas I remember anywhere on the web. I guess it's not a surprise that no one is selling them on eBay, as any young dinosaur fanatic worth his or her salt would have worn them threadbare.

So, anyhoo: more silly Mesozoic Minimalism from yours truly. Unlike my Dinosaur Family Crests, which may yet expand, this set is pretty well complete. If you're so inclined, you may purchase them in my little shoppe.

Project Daspletosaurus 2013

Last Autumn, Dr. Dave Hone approached me with the opportunity to design a logo for a crowdfunding campaign he was preparing to launch, after he had seen my Dinosaur Family Crest designs. I jumped at the chance to help out. I mean, pitching in to help a paleontologist and science communicator I respect do significant research? I couldn't resist, and I'm happy to report that his campaign has begun.

Hosted by the science crowdfunding platform Microryza, Hone's project will see him travelling from the UK to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta to work with Darren Tanke, studying fossils which seem to show evidence of cannibalism amongst the tyrannosaurid Daspletosaurus. Hone wrote about it yesterday at Archosaur Musings, where you can see images of the fossils he'll study. More importantly, kick some money his way via Microryza, and check out the excellent video Hone and Matt Van Rooijen made to promote the work. It is humbling to think of how much we've learned about the mighty tyrannosaurs since I was born; what was a lumbering monster has gained more and more nuance to become a real animal. Hone and Tanke will get to tell more of that story with their research.

A bit about the process of designing the project logo, if you'll indulge me. Dr. Hone and I had a meeting via Skype to discuss the project goals and the sort of graphic he wanted, and I began sketching immediately. It was decided to use two Daspletosaurus individuals facing off in some way, and in general to continue the modernist aesthetic established in my family crest project. Because this graphic would represent a more complex idea than those crests and involve more text, I began sorting out ways to flesh out the extremely minimal forms of the earlier project.

The result is above. The shape is inspired by the crest on Alberta's flag. I accommodated the long forms of the daspletosaurs by posing them on an incline, further amping up the drama of the moments-from-happening battle. The field under the peak is filled with a pattern based on a geological symbol for silty sandstone, inspired by the make-up of the Dinosaur Park Formation. Dr. Hone was very easy to work with, providing valuable constructive feedback. It was a small project, but a great privilege.

So. Let's send Dave Hone to Canada!

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Ivan Chermayeff

This will be a quick one today, featuring a poster rather than a book. In 1982, legendary graphic designer Ivan Chermayeff designed a poster for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, advertising free admission on Friday and Saturday nights.

 Poster design by Ivan Chermayeff; image courtesy the AIGA design archives.

You know you're a design bigwig if you're signing your work. A delightful bit of modernist design, playing on the upright forms of theropods that stalked museum halls before the dinosaur renaissance. Chermayeff likely got the gig thanks to the Mobil connection, as Mobil was one of the Chermayeff & Geismar design studio's big clients, and most enduring logo designs.

I do have a bunch of books to scan, and I know Marc always has something in the works, so I'm sure we'll be back on our usual Vintage Dinosaur Art schedule soon. This post also gives me the idea to look for more dinosaurs used in poster design, so I'll start rooting around and see what I can find.

New duds!

If you're reading this from an RSS feed, bop on over to chasmosaurs.blogspot.com. Just finished a redesign of the site. Back to featuring an actual Chasmosaurus in the header!

Fossil Hunting on Redbubble

As I recently posted, I've started a shop at Redbubble, a site which allows artists to sell their art and design on a print-on-demand basis while still providing a high-quality product. That's one of my recent additions up above, which has wound up being more popular than I expected. I've been very happy with the site so far, and I've thrown myself into it with more enthusiasm than the other web marketplaces I've explored. Of course, I immediately started scouting for good paleontologically inspired artwork. With prime gifting season barreling towards us, you may just get a few ideas. All images are copyright to the individual artists; click their names to see their shops.

Glendon Mellow


I have to start with Glendon Mellow, since he was how I found out about the site, long before I had a body of work to stock my store. If you're not familiar with his work and writing at The Flying Trilobite and Symbiartic, his Redbubble shop is a good way to get up to speed. His distinctive take on science-art, joining scientific concepts and artifacts with surreal imagery, has gained him many admirers, but you'll also find his wonderful beetle illustrations, his trilobite zodiac designs, and, appropriately enough for our purposes, a couple of charismatic saurians, such as the Avimimus above.

Scott Elyard


Scott's dinosaurs aren't strict representations of animals in natural environments; rather, he uses bold juxtapositions of color and pop art techniques in compositions that playfully emphasize the pure forms of the animals themselves. I feel a real kinship with him based on our backgrounds in design, and I love the way he spins that in a totally different way. Follow his work at Cyrillic Typewriter.

Raven Amos


Like Scott, Raven brings a designerly touch to her dinosaur art, and I love her explorations of historical aesthetics: in particular, her Art Nouveau design of a drinking Troodon. She's also done some mock branding for Mesozoic-inspired products. Like Glendon, she's using the zodiac to structure a project, illustrating dinosaurs that cleverly refer to the zodiac symbol (such as her Cancer Conchoraptor). Check out some great work-in-progress posts at the Caw Box.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Scott and Raven's Indiegogo campaign to support their January Archosaurs and Automata art exhibition. Go there!

Niroot Puttapipat


Niroot is another recent Redbubble recruit, which may have been spurred my tweeted insistence that he give it a shot. Longtime readers here will know of Niroot's work well, his fanciful take on dinosaurs that nonetheless have a presence as if having been drawn from live models, as in his "field sketch" of an Olorotitan herd. Also: Triceratops on a bicycle (which has the most adorable handlebars imaginable). If you're not following Niroot at Himmapaanensis, you really ought to consider it.

Jaime Headden


Jaime will also be known to readers as the writer behind The Bite Stuff, but he's also an accomplished artist. As his interest in chompers may suggest, Jaime has rendered some absolutely lovely stippled illustrations of dinosaur skulls, and for the very nerdy among us, his skull cross sections would be a heck of a conversation starter. In the right crowd, naturally.

Angie Rodrigues


Another paleoartist with an uncanny command of color, Angie's hadrosaurs in particular blow my mind. Her brushstrokes are bold and add a sense of drama to her work, even when it's just a simple composition highlighting the animal front and center. Also available are some beautiful works devoted to extant mammals. You can find more venues from which to purchase her art at her blog.

Sean Craven


Sean Craven's shop includes a mix of the forms I've written about in the other artists' sections: there are pen and ink profiles, skeletals, and simple designs in striking color. His studies of bones, as part of his Bonelands series, are a treat, lit in odd hues. Most importantly of all though, where else are you going to get a print of a crapping Stegosaurus? Follow Sean at Renaissance Oaf, as well.

Julius Csotonyi
If you like Julius Csotoni's Futalognkosaurus dukei, which I do, you're in luck! It's the single piece he's got available. Maybe if he sells a few he'll add some more. Julius recently jumped into the blogging world as well, at Evolutionary Routes.

One thing I've heard from my very kind patrons is that they are impressed by the generally high level of artistry found on the site as well as the usability of the site and its good customer service. As a Redbubble customer myself, I'm thrilled with the speed of order processing. I ordered a print last Friday and it arrived on Monday, with care taken. It shipped in a sturdy tube, wrapped in tissue paper for stability, with a band of paper to keep it rolled up instead of tape. So I can confidently recommend patronizing all of these paleoartists. Niroot reports that the cut he recieves from each print sold on Redbubble is less than that of DeviantArt, so do support artists that choose to market themselves there. It's an interesting contrast: the two sites take opposite approaches, with DeviantArt supporting a more robust set of community features and Redbubble presenting itself as more of a storefront. As artists and patrons get used to the on-line marketplace, it will surely continue to evolve.

Still, I can confidently invite others to join this small Redbubble paleo community. As with any online art community, it has its fair share of pop dinosaur art that isn't concerned with staying true to the integrity of the living animals as revealed by paleontological research and informed speculation. And that's fine; I love Yoshi and other cartoon representations, the Jurassic Park raptors, and B-movie monsters. That said, many of us have a deeper appreciation for artwork that doesn't play fast and loose with forms, finding much aesthetic merit in anatomical fidelity.

Of course, feel free to add to this list in the comments.

Work-in-Progress: Minimalist Dinosaur Badges

There are plenty of well-worn reasons stated for love of dinosaurs. The appeal of the monstrous. The scientific curiosity. The romance of a world lost to time. Simple nostalgia. I can relate to all of these (and I'm sure there are more), but one that I think is just as important to me is the elegance of their forms. This may be particularly clear in dinosaurs since I know them primarily through graphic depictions. Skeletals, scale diagrams, cladograms, and illustrations that span a spectrum of realism are how we know dinosaurs (not to mention the many ways fossils themselves have been depicted as printing and visualization technologies have evolved).

As a designer and illustrator, dinosaurs give me a wonderfully varied playground in which to play. My current explorations involve distilling forms to potent simple shapes, and here again dinosaurs provide me excellent material to play with. My primary tool is the pen tool in Adobe illustrator, which allows users to use Bézier curves to create scalable shapes. When I first started using the computer for graphics, the pen tool mystified me. At some point in the last five years or so, it just clicked, and now I use it so much that I occasionally daydream about creating curves. I find it to be an endlessly rewarding challenge to create shapes using the least number of points to define them.

I've been exploring this in dinosaurs, combining a long-gestating interest in heraldry with the international style of graphic design. The international style is seen as too minimalist, too constricting, too boring by a lot of people, but I find it to be a fruitful source of inspiration, even if I don't bind myself strictly to it. After my experience of designing author-directed covers self-published book over the last four years, I find it liberating to be able to dispatch with the design excesses I was often instructed to use. I think of this phase of my development as a designer as finding my own style and voice by experimenting with iconic styles. Here's a work-in-progress sample of where my explorations have been leading me.



I plan on covering all of the -idae level clades. I'm also considering nesting them under corresponding marks for higher clades. This opens the possibility of using color as an organization scheme (the color here is chosen for looks alone). Right now, I don't have an end goal, other than a nice big collection of colorful badges with dinosaurs on them. It's fun simply to think about the distinctive forms of various clades and find ways to distill them. How much detail is thrown out before losing the essence of the form? I'd love to see this develop into something that can truly communicate paleontological knowledge, but even if it just ends up being a personal project, I think it will be fruitful. It could be expressed as embroidered patches, as screenprints, or as one element of a larger project. I don't know yet, and that's what's exciting.

This has also been an experiment in inviting feedback via various social networks. I've found that it's all about Facebook for me, with Flickr in distant second, Twitter behind that, and Google Plus a waste of time. It's an interesting result. I certainly don't try to put more work into Facebook, and it's not my preferred venue, but if it works, it works. I'd love to say that G+ was the winner, but it just doesn't have the traction yet. Now it will be fun to see how sharing it here will go over. Have at it!

A Selection of Etsy Dinosaurs

I've said before that finding good dinosaur crafts and prints is a hit-and-miss operation. But it just makes the good ones shine brighter.

Mitchell Seymour runs a shop called Dinorawrs, featuring charming watercolor illustrations of prehistoric animals. This piece, featuring a raucous brood of Microraptor is a good example of what you'll find.

Picking one piece to share was difficult! I could have easily chosen his take on the azhdarchids eating infant dinosaurs meme, his literal play on the name of Bambiraptor, or his reclining Estemmenosuchus.

Though I've shared her work before, I couldn't write this without including Sharon Wegner-Larson, a frequent commenter here and a fellow blogging graphic designer. Her Omegafauna shop expands on her BFA thesis project of paleo-themed textiles.

Joanna Barnum did this cool tribute to the State Dinosaur of Maryland, Astrodon johnsoni.

Her shop is full of terrific science-art, and should be of special interest for Darwin fans.

If you're looking for nice dino-themed stationery, Etsy seller Sian's shop Drawosaur creates whimsical greeting cards with frolicking dinosaurs that should appeal to the legions of fans our friend Niroot has amassed.

Yeah, I've got one, too.


Couldn't let this opportunity to hawk my own wares pass, could I? At any rate, if you have a favorite Etsy seller specializing in dinosaur merchandise, let me know in the comments. I'd love to do another post like this.

Indiana's new state flag

UPDATED! Tweaked my first design, added a second.

UPDATED AGAIN! Using this as a landing page for my efforts to spread the word, so added context.

I've designed two posters to help fight creationism in Indiana schools, after our state senate's "Committee on Education and Career Development" voted to let Senate Bill 89 through (Marc and I have already posted twice about the issue). Forgive the intrusion of this issue here. It's much broader in scope than our usual subject matter here, but I think I speak for both Marc and myself when I say that the reason we write about dinosaurs is that we're passionate about science, reason, and the educated appreciation of nature. So not to use this platform would be wrong. If this doesn't interest you, feel free to disregard it; we'll not be turning this into an Evolution Vs. Creationism blog, and all things saurian will continue to rule here. Anyhow.

The first poster is a play on our state flag - in case you're not familiar with it, there's supposed to be a flame on that torch.



The second is a cheeky travel poster. I flipped the state upside down. How clever!


These are web versions, but I've got them ready to go at 300dpi, 11" x 17" in TIF or PSD. Available at request. Please share to your heart's content.

I feel really crummy that this has gotten this far. I've been so swamped with school, work, and family life that I haven't really stayed abreast of the issue, except to read NCSE's updates and RT them. I doubt I have the eloquence or poise to make a convincing argument to any elected official. Or a fellow citizen, for that matter. But luckily it's not all in my hands. NCSE reports that these fine people have spoken up for our childrens' education:

John Staver, professor of chemistry and science education at Purdue University; Chuck Little, executive director of the Indiana Urban Schools Association; David Sklar, the Director of Government Relations for the Jewish Community Relations Council; the Reverend Charles Allen, a chaplain for Grace Unlimited, a campus ministry in the Indianapolis area; and Reba Boyd Wooden, executive director of the Indiana Center for Inquiry.

I admit to a feeling of despair that their words didn't persuade the seven Republicans and one Democrat who voted this through the so-called "Committee on Education and Career Development" in the State Senate.

But that's as far as it's going. SCIENCE THROWDOWN. For more, please do keep up with the National Center for Science Education, who does excellent work to protect our intellectual future.

Indiana's new state motto

I've got a new state motto for the good ol' Hoosier state, which I've called home since I was born.

Seems about right. Seriously.

I am an Indiana citizen, and Creationism is bullshit.

Design Exercise: Raptor Red Teaser Poster

Have you read Raptor Red, Bob Bakker's novel of a female Utahraptor's adventures in Cretaceous North America? I have, though it's probably been fifteen years. The tale of Raptor Red and her struggles with survival and family drama, it was another way for Bakker to popularize his views on dinosaur behavior and physiology. Red is intelligent - at one point remembering the presence of off-shore Kronosaurs and luring a big Acrocanthosaurus out to its doom. You could almost substitute primitive people for Red's clan without too much trouble. I'm interested in reading it again to see how it's fared with time.

One thing I was sure of then, and am now: it would make a heck of a movie. When presented with a design exercise at work recently, involving turning a book cover into a movie poster, I chose this one. We had an hour to do it, so I kept it really simple, choosing to highlight that signature sickle-claw on her foot. I based it on my own photo of the Field Museum's Deinonychus .



It wasn't my intention, and the thought hadn't occurred to me, but my friend and coworker Matt said that it reminded him a little of Samurai Jack. I'd love to see a traditionally animated version of Raptor Red directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. If you've not seen any of his work, look up the episode of Samurai Jack called "Three Blind Archers." The ability of Tartakovsky and his team to animate the sounds Jack hears when blindfolded makes me think that they could do some really interesting things with the Utahraptor's sensory experience. Considering the announcement of the Pixar dinosaur film, we may be approaching dinosaur saturation point. So if Raptor Red is to make it to the screen, she may have to wait a while (though the book has been optioned for adaptation, there doesn't seem to have been any movement on it in over a decade).

But what the heck. There are a million ways to do this imaginary project. Who would you like to see adapt Raptor Red? Or is adapting it at all a bad idea?