The Chase

Image courtesy HDwallpapers.in.

Walking With Dinosaurs 3D has been released. As is probably well-known to anyone reading this post, the production company, in a panic to comfort viewers used to the tropes of modern big-budget children's entertainment, tragically decided to add dialogue, pop music cues, and puerile humor to the film. And I had such high hopes in May.

Reviews are uniformly unkind. "If you could turn off the soundtrack you’d have a fascinating silent film featuring photo-realistic prehistoric beasts. But just you try ignoring what sounds like Smurfs 2 meets Alvin and the Chipmunks," writes Chris Knight for the National Post (though he also refers to Edmontosaurus as a carnivore, LOLWUT). As of this writing, the film has a 25% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, though 61% of ~5,200 users on the site like it, so who knows. Maybe the gamble will pay off and in six years we'll be seeing the third movie in the series rolling out. Here's my idea: in a Triassic twist on Roxanne, a dim-witted Plateosaurus tries to win the heart of his crush with the help of a wacky Liliensternus. Take that one, 20th Century Fox. The next one costs you.

We may or may not review the movie here (there has been mention of Marc and Niroot possibly seeing it together), but seeing yet another big animated dinosaur project get muddled by terrible studio decisions has pretty well convinced me that big studios will never make the dinosaur movie I want to see. Which, for the record, would be something that feels like a feature-length version of the first lagoon shot from Jurassic Park. A narrative arc would be fine. It's been done before, and well - think The Bear. What I want is an immersive, I-just-time-travelled-to-the-Mesozoic feel, with a great score and as little anthropomorphism as possible. There's no way that film gets made anytime soon.

There's hope, though. Who knows what will be possible as the technology gets cheaper and dinosaur fanatics get more motivated to make something on their own? Or perhaps expecting a feature film is the wrong way to look at it. Maybe the dream of an immersive exploration of prehistory is better left to game designers, like the folks behind Saurian (also, like it at FB and follow on Twitter). They'll reportedly be crowdfunding the project as it develops, and I think that the work-in-progress pieces of the process they've shown give some hope that it will be a worthy project to back.







We can spit and curse at huge studios all we want, but they'll never really care about what a small group of passionate paleontology fanatics think. There's no incentive. I'm tired of chasing the wrong dream.

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...

Vintageish Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Worlds - Part 1

First published in 1996 (hence its filing under 'vintageish'), Dinosaur Worlds promises 'new dinosaurs, new discoveries', and indeed, much of the book deals with animals that were relatively new to science at the time (or brand new, in some cases). Authored by Don Lessem (inevitably nicknamed 'Dino Don'), it's a richly illustrated, surprisingly chunky, and highly accessible trip through dinosaur palaeontology in the mid '90s.

Subtle Frontiers: Thesis Exhibition Announcement

The exhibition of my graphic design thesis project that caps my MFA career opens this Tuesday, December 10, at the Grunwald Gallery of Art on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington. It will be accompanied by a release of the project website. Subtle Frontiers: Observations in Urban Ecology is my attempt to combine my passions for graphic design and natural history, telling the story of some of my favorite plants and animals that make up my own backyard.

I'll also be giving a gallery talk on Friday the 13th at noon, speaking to the commonalities between the practices of design and natural history as well as my interest in seeing stronger bonds form between the science and design communities. If anyone reading this happens to show up to that talk, I must beg your advance forgiveness if I seem somewhat addled. It has been a wild ride to the finish line.

I'll be updating this post with my project's web address when it launches. And yes, a non-avian dinosaur or two just might have crept in to the project...

Tsintaosaurus - the 'flat nose' dinosaur that wasn't

Hopefully, most of you will already be aware that Tsintaosaurus has a new, far more dignified look, with its unfortunate unicorn horn replaced by a far more elegant affair reminiscent of other lambeosaurine hadrosaurs. This is thanks to Albert Prieto-Márquez and Jonathan Wagner, in a paper published in PLOS ONE (so it's free, free, free! To view). Jaime Headden has already written a blog post on the subject, which is a must-read if you haven't done so already, and he mentions the prevalence of the 'cock-'n'-balls' meme, as popularised by John Sibbick and others.

However, while most reconstructions of Tsintaosaurus over the years have stuck firmly with the phallic look, there was a brief period back in the '90s when an alternative was proposed - namely, that that big pointy bone actually lay flat along the animal's snout in life. Palaeoart featuring this alternative, shall we say, flaccid Tsintaosaurus is rather rarer, which inspired me to once again dig out my copies of Dinosaurs! magazine, where the idea received a richly illustrated airing.

Vintageish Dinosaur Art: An Alphabet of Dinosaurs - Part 2

Because Wayne Barlowe's an awfully talented sort of person, may I present a handful more of his dinosaur paintings, as featured in An Alphabet of Dinosaurs. On no account should you miss part 1 if you haven't seen it yet. Forward, Barlowe!

A Tardy Pirate

I took a short break from my thesis project work to whip up a scurvy saltasaur of my own, since Marc's post was so much fun and full of so many awesome prehistorical pirates. Here he is, with Polly the dromaeosaur on his shoulder. I suppose I could have put a Psittacosaurus on Captain Salty's shoulder for the etymological pun of it, but I wanted wings and big floofy feathers.

Back to the thesis salt mines! Stay tuned for an announcement about where you can view what I've been working on all semester.

Salty saltasaurs

It recently occurred to me (well, a couple of weeks ago, while writing one of those book reviews) that Saltasaurus just doesn't get the attention that it used to in palaeoart. Twenty years ago, including a Saltasaurus in your Cool Dinosaur Book for Cool Kids was de rigueur - after all, it was a sauropod but with armour! Alas, as the specimens of weirdo sauropods have stacked up, old Salty just isn't fashionable any more.

What could we possibly do to encourage more Saltasaurus art? Why, only groaningly obvious puns could possibly suffice!

Vintageish Dinosaur Art: An Alphabet of Dinosaurs - Part 1

Yes, it's the first Vintageish Dinosaur Art post - because I've stretched David's name for this series quite far enough. Wayne Barlowe's paintings in An Alphabet of Dinosaurs are copyrighted 1995, while this UK edition of the book was published in 1997; perhaps a little too recent, even by my standards. Nevertheless, it's remarkable how much even books from the mid-to-late '90s have become dated from a scientific perspective, even if the artwork remains stunning - as it does here.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs - The Real Monsters

Another entry in the Dinosaur Dynasty book series from 1993, The Real Monsters focuses on a select few dinosaurs that embody the largest, and often toothiest, that said archosaurian lineage had to offer at various points in the Mesozoic. As such, a scary-looking tyrannosaur with yellowing teeth and a tiny, beady eye leers out from the cover, for maximum child-enticing appeal. For as every kid knows, the coolest dinosaurs are those that look like they would happily chew, slice, gore, stamp, or otherwise pulverise you to death without so much as blinking a nictitating membrane. This is a book dedicated to them.