Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Skeletons

Regular readers will know that I can't get enough of dinosaur pop-up books, having reviewed several over the years, and 1991's Dinosaur Skeletons is a worthy addition to the canon. Intriguingly, the book's concept is remarkably similar to that of 1984's Dinosaurs - a Lost World in Three Dimensions, only with considerably more up-to-date artwork - the titular skeletons are the pop-ups, while fleshed-out dinos are confined to the 2D illustrations. Not to worry - even a skeleton can threaten to take your eye out, especially when there's a mouth full of pointy teeth thrust in one's general direction.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Mighty Giants

Welcome back to the wonderful world of old-school dinosaur books - hey, it's been a while. The Mighty Giants - part of the Dinosaur World Pop-Up Books series (which ran to at least two books, apparently) - was published in 1988, but for all its scientific infidelity, it might as well have been published in 1978...or 1968. Yes, it's one of those. Hold on to your pear-shaped tyrannosaurs and oddly uniform teeth, everyone!

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs: a Purnell Magic Pop-Up Book

There are a select number of popular dinosaur books in which it becomes apparent, quite quickly, that the author really didn't do an awful lot of research on the subject - and so it is with Dinosaurs, a book that could pass for a 'greatest hits' of palaeontological howlers (circa 1982). Of course, when a book is over 30 years old this has a tendency to add to its charms, rather than induce one to pen a deranged letter in green ink and mail it to the publisher; what's more, it also happens to be a delightfully executed pop-up book. If it's a rapid route straight to my heart that you're after (and why wouldn't you be?), you can't go far wrong with a pop-up book.

The cover of Dinosaurs provides a pretty good indication of what to expect inside - that is, all the stock clichés of dinosaur books from the '60s and '70s. A tottering Tyrannosaurus, resembling a rubbery costume from one of the more ropey kaiju films, confronts a rather podgy Triceratops, while an erupting volcano and pterosaur provide background filler. Of course, this is not to knock the illustrator, Borje Svensson, too much - he was probably given very little to work on, especially as the book apparently lacked a scientific consultant.

The opening spread features a couple of very neat ideas, courtesy of John Strejan (design), Tor Lokvig (paper engineering) and, of course, Svensson. Having the animals' vastness emphasised by exploiting the potential for verticality in a pop-up (or, having it pop out in your face like) is always an excellent idea, and it works particularly well here as the sauropod skeleton unfolds slowly when the page is opened, making the final reveal (and the way it dwarfs the puny humans) all the more impressive.

Down below, there's an excellent use of slats to transition from a fleshed-out sauropod to a behatted man excavating its ribcage, all those millions of years later (it having apparently been petrified where it stood, or perhaps hastily buried in the Great Deluge, an idea apparently now back in vogue among a certain group of delightfully nonsensical morons).

It's not until the second spread that we encounter the first of the book's bizarre anachronisms, as Pteranodon soars majestically through the skies of the, er, Late Jurassic. Author Larry Shapiro opts to stick to the tried-and-tested vision of amphibious sauropods, slurping up mushy aquatic greenery "like spaghetti" (apparently he'd been watching Fantasia). Still, the pop-up effect - with a three-dimensional Pteranodon spreading its wings as the pages are opened - is, once again, well executed...

...even if the Pteranodon does not appear best pleased with the whole silly situation. Being referred to as a "dinosaur of the air" will probably do little to alleviate its temper, either.

The plesiosaur in this illustration may be a little, uh, fanciful (at least it has retracted nostrils!), but I have a soft spot for the ichthyosaur. Svensson has done a lovely job in depicting the sea spray around the speeding animal, while the pull-tab feature is excellent - the animal rears up to grab the fish, and snaps its jaws with a scissor-like action. It's also possible to force the plesiosaur's head downwards, but doing so is ill-advised; clearly, it's had quite enough to eat already.

The book's spectacular centrepiece features - what else? - a clash of the saurian titans involving the 'King of the Dinosaurs', Tyrannosaurus rex (as tall as "two houses"), and its noble armour-plated adversary...Stegosaurus. It's an awesome multi-layered pop-up, with Stegosaurus employing its spiky distal end in an attempt to gouge some interesting pathological features into T. rex's precious face, but...come on now, really? As any kid with a healthy interest in extinct megafauna will tell you, the two combatants in this admittedly impressive piece were separated in time by something in the order of 85 million years, which is no trivial span. Perhaps this book really was inspired by the Rite of Spring section in Fantasia.

...I've said enough already.

This Triceratops represents another superb use of the pop-up format - with its horns protruding from the page in a suitably confrontational manner - even if the animal itself looks rather bizarre, with its squat body and double nose horn (which might be a misplaced beak). Meanwhile, cheeky Struthiomimus, having sprouted an extra digit, is making off with somebody's egg as per bloody usual. I am fond of the backdrop in this piece, and in particular the sky; there's a lovely, painterly quality to it that one couldn't help but feel would be missing in a typical kids' dinosaur book today.

And finally...an endearingly retro pop-up mountain featuring the stars of the hour; Brachiosaurus (on land!) is happy to take the limelight, while Tyrannosaurus appears unusually reserved. There's an accompanying map, too, detailing the locations where the various animals' fossils have been found...sort of.  It's the perfect way to finish this muddled, but beautifully produced little book.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs: Giants of the Earth (a Pop-Up Book)

An obscure 1980s children's book - it feels like it's been a while. Dinosaurs: Giants of the Earth was published in 1988, and is illustrated by Richard Courtney, with paper engineering by Keith Moseley. The author is unknown, but it's interesting to note that Paul Sereno apparently 'cooperated' in the making of this charming, chunky little book. Of course, I always love a pop-up.

This is definitely one of those books for which the illustrator threw together some stuff based on his general experience of palaeoart over the years. There's no outright copying going on, but the animals have clearly been painted freehand, and veer between the semi-serious and the rather cartoonish. In the tradition of many kids' dinosaur books to this day (and even some godawful coffee table fare aimed at a more general audience), the look of the animals is also a good decade out of date - the tripod tyrannosaur being an excellent start.

All that said, this prancing Coelophysis isn't such a bad start (you know, for 1988). It's a nice active pose if nothing else, and the pop-up leg-swinging action is quite hilarious - like it's performing high kicks in a saurian chorus line (although it's missing a frilly skirt and feathered headdress, and of course you need the right music). The look of this one is a little early-1980s Sibbickian, which probably isn't a coincidence. As can be seen here, a lot of the foliage in this book is actually quite carefully observed and pleasingly painted, even if it's a little generic - as is so often the case, the illustrator was talented, but dinosaurs were outside of his area of expertise.

Veering towards the more cartoonish end of the scale, this piece ingeniously takes the classic 'neck-chomping theropod' meme and applies it to the pop-up format in the most wacky way possible. The Ceratosaurus, with its great big googly eye wedged firmly into the wrong hole in its skull, is seen applying its mouth like a giant pair of shears to the neck of the unfortunate sauropod, which itself sports a head that looks nothing like that of a Diplodocus, or of any other sauropod for that matter. In other respects, the Diplodocus definitely resembles any number that appeared in dinosaur books prior to 1980, which were normally riffing on art produced by one of the greats, like Burian.

Ceratosaur: BLARRGKEJKJJJH

I posted this on Facebook, and may I present an excellent caption subsequently provided by the quite dazzlingly witty Natasha Sizzy Hansen.

Tubby as this pair may be, you've got to love the audacity of those dazzling colour schemes - and the horizontal, ungulate-esque pupils are a nice touch. The pop-up mechanism works well here too, with the Parasaurolophus rearing up to feed from a conifer. It's just unfortunate that it doesn't seem to have any shoulders. You can tell that the Ouranosaurus is a little perturbed.

Saltasaurus rearing: definite shades of Mark Hallett. Still, again the use of the pop-up format is excellent here - the crazy necks and tails of sauropods are just begging to be turned into sprawling pop-up spreads, and it always feels like a wasted opportunity when they're not (er, in a pop-up book that is). It's a superb way to given an impression of the animals' sheer size. Bizarrely, while the underside of the tail of this Saltasaurus boasts large,flat, crocodilian 'belly scales', the underside of its neck is, er, the same as the top. Consequently, no doubt, it has sprouted the head of some angry armadillo-like beast. It's purple with rage!

Remember the shoulderless Parasaurolophus? Look at this attempted Albertosaurus skeleton, and it suddenly makes a lot more sense - it has uniform ribs that appear to continue, snake-like, all the way up to its head.

Meanwhile, tangerine Tyrannosaurus appears to be mischievously wiggling its little arms about while clutching its hapless, brightly-coloured nondescript victim, in front of the awe-inspiring Mt Ubiquitous Primordial Volcano. The Albertosaurus skeleton gnashes its teeth when the page is opened and closed, which is pretty well constructed and amusing enough.


Yes, we might be worlds away from the splendour of highly accomplished pop-up Sibbick, but I needed a break from all the high-end palaeoart - I'm starting to run dangerously low on hyperbole and slavish, doting praise (in particular, my stocks of 'intricately detailed' and 'masterful' have hit rock bottom). Nevertheless, it's a return to Kish for next week!

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Babies

If any of the great artists of the Dinosaur Renaissance era deserve a much greater online presence than they currently have, then it's Eleanor (aka Ely) Kish. We've only featured her work on two occasions before, and this is the first book to grace LITC that is entirely illustrated by her. Happily, it's also a pop-up book - from the same National Geographic series as the recently-featured Creatures of Long Ago: Dinosaurs. As the title suggests, it's an insurmountable onslaught of cute.

Dinosaur Babies is quite unusual for Kish in that, by necessity of the format, it places the animals up front and centre, rather than featuring them as components of a more broadly realised prehistoric landscape. That doesn't stop the backgrounds being beautiful, of course, as amply demonstrated by the gorgeous desert scene on the cover.  Of course, the Pinacosaurus are lovely too - I'm particularly taken by the expression on the face of the individual on the right. It's not impressed...

A 1980s book about fresh-from-the-egg saurians was inevitably going to feature Protoceratops - after all, it took a nest with it wherever it went (even the Carnegie toy had one). True to form, the opening spread features a hatchling peering right out of the page at you. There's wonderful attention to detail - note the egg teeth - and the inclusion of a lizard, if quite common in these scenes, helps add a little faunal variety. The adult animals display Kish's typical anatomical rigour, with a modern-style posture advanced from the sprawling, lizardy portrayal of the animal that was still quite prevalent at the time. Kish's creations were sometimes prone to 'zombie dinosaur' syndrome - deathly thin with a pelvis that could take your eye out - but fortunately there's scant evidence of that here.

Maiasaura was another shoo-in for a book like this, for obvious reasons. In fact, a Maiasaura nesting site also appeared in Sibbick's pop-up effort, and there are a number of similarities - from the viewer taking on a nestling's perspective, to the adult chasing off a Troodon in the background. While the Sibbick scene, with its three-dimensional rendering of the mother's head, is the more striking overall, Kish's take is still delightful. The protruding arms are a nice touch.

My favourite scene in Dinosaur Babies is definitely this one, featuring cryptically camouflaged young Corythosaurus attempting to evade the eyes of prowling Albertosaurus. Cryptic camouflage remains a surprisingly underexplored theme in palaeoart (with recent notable examples popping up in All Yesterdays), and Kish has a particular talent for it. Of course, this is also an effective showcase for Kish's skill in creating highly detailed, believable and lush forested landscapes for her dinosaurs to dwell in. More than any other spread in the book, this one is bursting with tiny details and charming interactive features.

Pulling this tab, for example, will conceal two young hadrosaurs in the foliage as they cower from their toothy aggressor.

 The tyrannosaur's head, leering out over the top of the page, helps set the scene very effectively - the very motion of it popping up akin to what the hadrosaurlings would see as the predator scanned over the undergrowth. Lifting a flap to the right reveals a Corythosaurus staring up at the carnivore, looking utterly terrified to be suddenly exposed. Just brilliant stuff.

While the Corythosaurus scene remains superb, this baby Deinonychus tug-of-war hasn't aged so well - if it weren't for the feet, these creatures would be unrecognisable as dromaeosaurs (the purple colouring is also, in retrospect, rather unfortunate). They seem to have cheeks, not to mention what appears to be luscious lipstick. Oh dear. It's always good to see Deinonychus doing something other than reducing an implausibly large adversary to juicy meaty chunks - look, there's one scratching! - but this one is perhaps best skipped over. Except...

...this is a nifty feature - the terrified Gobiconodon are just getting an eyeful at first, but pulling a tab sends forth a probing claw. Again, Deinonychus predating animals smaller than itself is a pleasant change.

Ah, the good old paddlin' sauropod. The animal ("Pleurocoelus", one of those dodgy genera with complicated histories) appears to be an adult but, strangely, is described as a 'thousand pound baby' in the text. Never mind - the scene is rendered pleasantly enough and the sauropod is decent for the '80s (remember, some people were still illustrating toddling 'brontosaurs' at this time), while the pop-up element is put to good effect in creating the tangled plant life dragged along by the giant animal.

Pulling the tabs here results in one animal swimming across the lake, while another (in the cameo image) pops its head up to say hello. Unfortunately, its face rather resembles that of the highly phylotarded sauropods in the brilliant documentary Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend.

And finally, as previewed on Facebook, here it is - the adorable Styracosaurus tot, bounding out of the page toward the reader, with a mischievous glint in his eye! A beautiful illustration. This spread also sees an airing of the now-discarded 'ceratopsian wagon circle' meme (below), with a deft pull of the tab making the facing animals flick their heads into the air. Unfortunately, Daspletosaurus seems to have fallen foul of the Curse of the Dodgy Perspective, but seeing a herd of ceratopsians acting like frontiersmen is sweetly nostalgic in a way that only peculiarly prevalent stereotyped notions of dinosaur behaviour as depicted in art can be.

There'll be more Vintage Dinosaur Art in the new year, when I embark on the futile task of attempting to scan pages from the gigantic De Oerwereld van de Dinosauriërs (Czerkas & Czerkas) using my pathetic all-in-one printer. Keep it Chasmosaurs!

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Creatures of Long Ago: Dinosaurs

Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this one - I missed the Monday deadline and then the other guys posted some material, and I thought it better that content be spread out over the week. Hopefully this book will be worth the wait - as nostalgia for some, and for everyone else as an interesting entry in the canon of one of the most well-known and respected palaeoartists. For my part, I had no idea it existed until very recently, and was instantly excited when I found it - pop-up Sibbick!

The illustrations in Creatures of Long Ago: Dinosaurs, which was published in 1988, show a marked improvement over those in the Norman encyclopedia from just three years prior. They demonstrate a stage in the evolution from Sibbick's earlier stodge-o-saurs to the altogether more active, muscular and modern-looking restorations of the '90s. Some quirks remain (including occasional peculiar leathery skin textures), but the improvements are obvious. Oh, and they picked a great cover, didn't they? Beautiful stuff. We're quite fond of chasmosaurs around here.

The book is comprised of six pop-up spreads, each of which features a snapshot of Mesozoic life in a particular time, although not in chronological order. All of the scenes feature North American animals, although whether or not this was intentional is not mentioned. While one or more large dinosaurs always provide the focus, each spread is crammed full of tiny, incidental detail, normally requiring some reader interaction to uncover (e.g. lifting a flap, pulling a tab), which really helps each piece come alive. It creates a sense of a truly three dimensional world populated by a large variety of animals just going about their business, even while monstrous dinosaurs duke it out in the foreground. The fiery orange sky in this opening spread is fantastic, immediately evoking a foreboding, primordial atmosphere.

This Ceratosaurus is a great way to kick things off (so to speak), as it appears to be literally stepping out of the page, which is a very immediate way of involving the reader in the Jurassic world being depicted. The perspective is exciting too, and shows off the vicious-looking claws on the animal's birdlike foot. Speaking of which, it's interesting to note the very birdlike scales on the tops of the toes, which are not present on the theropods in the Norman book, and perhaps hint that the artist was looking at these animals in a different light.

Peeling away some of the foliage reveals a Camptosaurus and, up in the corner, an Archaeopteryx. Quite what Archaeopteryx is doing in North America, I'm not sure - I suppose you just can't have a dinosaur book without it. Still, they are nice inclusions as I said.

Last week, I noted it was a shame that another pop-up book had missed the opportunity of having a brachiosaur's neck crane out from the page. Of course, that's exactly what they've done here - and it looks bloody marvellous. It's not all about having sauropods poking one in the eye, mind you - there are a great many subtle touches when opening the pages, from the Diplodocus lowering its neck on this spread, to the Stegosaurus raising its tail to fend off Ceratosaurus. The sauropods in this scene may look outdated now, but at least they were an improvement on the 1985 beasts - note for example that the Apatosaurus in the background no longer has such a 'brontosaur' (as in, the popular artistic representation) bodyplan.

If there's one animal that stands out as being peculiar even for the time, then it's this Allosaurus. Even in 1985, Sibbick gave the animal a skull that was the right sort of shape, with lacrimal horns - so what happened here? My pet theory is that this is actually a mislabeled Torvosaurus, based both on later Sibbick megalosaurs and the fact that Sibbick apparently knew what an Allosaurus head (basically) looked like. If that's true then it's still wrong, just not quite to the same degree. Er, which is much better. Yes.

These blue-headed Ornitholestes are interesting, and the pull tab feature demonstrates the wonderful attention to detail prevalent in this book - as the individual on the left moves across the page, it follows an undulating path so that it appears to be running. At the same time, a small pterosaur takes a diving arc from left to right. Little things, little things...

One of the more spectacular papercraft constructions in this book is undoubtedly this Tyrannosaurus, shown facing off (as it has a tendency to do) against a Triceratops family group, including a juvenile. Unlike the other scenes in the book, which are intended to be viewed head-on, this little diorama is best viewed by placing the book on a surface - after which the T. rex becomes a towering, imposing figure. It's also a huge improvement on the weirdo Norman-pedia version, with a far more Tyrannosaurus-like skull and a pair of impressive drumstricks; the very awkward tail is unfortunate but, then, these things happen sometimes when one's trying to make a pop-up book work. The Triceratops display an elephantine quality that was common in palaeoart well into the '90s, although the stumpy-horned baby is very cute.

The incidental details are especially easy to miss in this vertical scene, including this crafty Troodon, hiding furtively underneath a fern. Troodon is one of the few animals to appear in more than one scene, and it's always accompanied by a label that reads "Troödon". Troodon: the Motörhead of dinosaur genera.

Back in the late '80s and the '90s, it wasn't uncommon to see gangs of tiny dromaeosaurs taking on game that was bigger than them by ludicrous orders of magnitude. Admittedly, the Parasaurolophus concerned in this picture is described as juvenile, but it would still appear to be 'squishy time' for a lot of its pint-sized would-be predators. All such jesting aside, however, this is a seriously beautiful piece of art, with gorgeous foliage and scenery, and a highly effective use of the pop-up element both to create an illusion of depth and to add dynamism and excitement to the scene. The composition places the viewer at the centre of the action, giving them a Dromaeosaurus'-eye view.

More background detail: pulling a tab results in two Stegoceras engaging each other in combat. Always a firm palaeoart favourite.

This is probably my favourite spread in the book, simply because it gets you right up in a dinosaur's FACE...without being all cheesy and over-dramatic about it. The construction of the nest is quite ingenious too, with hatchlings emerging when tabs are pulled and flaps, er, flapped. While it's easy to be distracted by the huge centrepiece, there are plenty of lovely background details here, too - notice the lake with crocodiles and turtles to the left, and the pterosaurs flying overhead. From an anatomical perspective, these hadrosaurs mark a considerable improvement over their Norman-pedia forebears, particularly when it comes to such details as the forelimbs (note the hands and, particularly, the fingers).

Pulling tabs to the right and left result in the appearance of nest-bothering predators, with the concerned Maiasaura reacting accordingly; one lowers its head to shoo away a monitor lizard, while the other twists around to follow some scarpering Troodon.

The final scene focuses on an ornithomimosaur family, but still manages to cram in Chasmosaurus, Hypacrosaurus, Icthyornis, Hesperornis, the plesiosaur Elasmosaurus, and an unspecified mammal and snake. It's a glorious image of an entire community of animals, and it's an absolute pleasure to explore the page, uncovering new intricate details and moving parts (such as the foot-stamping chasmosaurs engaged in a dominance display). Soaking in every tiny facet of a piece is part of the enjoyment of appreciating Sibbick's work, but here there's extra fun to be had in peering under and around some parts of a pop-up piece to catch glimpses at others. Or maybe I'm just a gibbering man-child, I dunno. (And yes, those plesiosaurs do look very silly...like they're shouting 'Hey! Over here! Don't forget us!')

Yes, I'm a little bit in love with this book - far more so than any man in his 20s should rightly be with a kiddies' dinosaur pop-up book produced in the 1980s. What can I say? It's a gem.