Vintage Dinosaur Art: more from The Age of Dinosaurs: A Photographic Record

It's time for another trip into the world of lovingly detailed miniature dinosaurs, as photographed by Jane Burton (with commentary from Dougal Dixon, because it was the 1980s). For those who missed the first part, FOR SHAME! Go back and check that out first - it's worth it for the Saltopus alone. In addition, I don't want to have to introduce the book again. I've got a stinking cold, you know, and am here as long as the mug of Lemsip lasts.

Anyway, without further delay, here's a slightly psychedelic hadrosaur!

While I appreciate a sudden explosion of pink blooms in a book otherwise filled with rather earthy tones as much as the next person, there's something quite uncanny about that eye.This picture is also rather jarring in that there aren't really any other close-ups like this in this book - this flower power Lambeosaurus profile shot seems a bit out of place.

Ah, that's more like it. As with the best shots in this book, there is an effective illusion of scale here, while the two Pachycephalosaurus models are wonderfully detailed and superbly posed, flashing their bright blue heads at one another. By far the best shots in this book are those that avoid any gimmicks and remain sharp and in focus, but this can also result in scenes that are rather static and dull. Having two animals displaying is an effective way to circumvent that problem, as it adds drama to the scene. This is further bolstered by the text, which describes this encounter as the warm up to a full-on headbutting session.

Where there is an attempt at gimmickry - as in the motion blur around these Struthiomimus - things can start to fall apart. Here, the blur is so extreme that it makes the animals look as if they have been fired out of a cannon; it doesn't help that the individual in the foreground appears to be flying over the water. Yeah, we get it, they were fast.

As I mentioned last week, there are only a couple of attempts at sauropods, and it's easy to imagine why - making tiny models of such huge animals look convincing in a photograph must be very tricky indeed. This Apatosaurus pic is a pretty decent attempt, and certainly a good job is made of forcing the viewer's perspective to create an illusion of depth. It's also rather pleasing to see that the dinosaurs are up and active, with elevated tails, although admittedly this was becoming more commonplace by 1984.

Here we have some egret(-like bird)s, and...an ankylosaur. But which one? It looks rather similar to Edmontonia, but - just to remind the reader that this book has plenty of throwbacks to the Palaeontology Dark Ages - it's labelled Palaeoscincus. Palaeoscincus, like the better known Trachodon, is a very dubious genus based on teeth that nevertheless popped up a lot in dinosaur books, and most specimens assigned to it have since been reclassified. Taxonomic issues aside, though, this is definitely one of the better photos - the model plants and the interaction between the dinosaurs give it a pleasingly naturalistic feel, and the lighting is superb.

Thecodontosaurus now, and another lovely scene. Perhaps the background doesn't quite fit in terms of perspective, but the composition is effective at simultaneously showing off the animals and, through the use of vegetation, drawing the viewer into the scene. I'm not sure you'd get away with a quadrupedal Thecodontosaurus these days, but this remains a beautiful depiction of a dinosaur that doesn't get an awful lot of attention in art.

Pterosaurs are often pretty nightmarish when they're done right, but tend to be much, much worse when people get them wrong. This depiction of Quetzalcoatlus is certainly an improvement on many of those that came before it (which often had tiny, teeth-filled heads), but is still pretty bizarre. It seems to be rather lacking in musculature, and its neck looks like it's been glued on to its body; that head is still a bit too small by comparison. Rather typically for the time, the animals are portrayed skulking around a huge slab of prime rib. Brrr.

I need to go and lie down with an ice pack on my head and a thermometer wedged in my mouth, feeling sorry for myself, but here's another of my absolute favourites to finish things off for now. The model might be outdated (it's Pterodactylus), but the execution of the photo is superb - the lighting in particular is excellent, and this really does just look like very fortuitous nature photography. Gorgeous stuff.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia

Dougal Dixon must be one of the all-time most prolific authors of popular dinosaur books. Back in the '80s and '90s, it certainly seemed like he was everywhere - bookshops would dedicate entire shelving units to him, and he employed a cadre of bodyguards in order to move around the streets without being mobbed by dinosaur-loving schoolchildren. (No, not really.) I've already reviewed a number of books from the DD stable, from the rather good to the plain embarrassing (hey, if you churn out that many books, there's bound to be the odd stinker every so often). This is one of the better, not to mention more weighty, entries in the Dixon oeuvre, and features a considerable number of illustrations - not by Dixon, mind you, but Andrew Robinson and David Johnston, who apparently "collaborated on many scientific and natural history publications". Most of them are pleasing enough for the late 1980s without being anything particularly special, but still offer an interesting slice of dinosaur illustration history.

Baryonyx was still the hot new kid on the block back then, and so naturally it gets the cover star treatment - depicted hurling a fish up into the air in a composition that's certainly striking and makes an excellent first impression. Unfortunately, most of the illustrations in this book follow the old-fashioned 'just-about-anatomically-rigorous-enough-to-not-look-terrible-lateral-view' model, as exemplified by Ceratosaurus below. The larger dinosaurs in particular don't get to do very much in this book, other than walk around a bit and look menacing.

Although we are never told who produced which plate, the differing styles of the illustrators quickly become apparent, although they aren't so jarring as to interrupt the book's sense of continuity (the animals are arranged in chronological order...most of the time). The artist behind, among others, the Megalosaurus below is definitely my favourite - the scaly skin textures are wonderful and their animals are much more convincing in terms of overall anatomy. Having said that, the Megalosaurus definitely owes something to the Invicta toy from the 1970s - in fact, it almost resembles someone's updated interpretation of it. "Megalosaurus was a hunter of Iguanodon," Dixon notes. Ah, that old trope...

Speaking of old tropes, here's yet another bloody T. rex that has had an ear inserted into the temporal fenestra behind its eye. WHY? Why did they keep doing this back in the '70s and '80s, and why only to T. rex? The mind boggles. Anyway, apart from that (and the dodgy skull in general) I'm actually quite fond of this one; the textures and lighting are nice, and I like that it's delivering a withering stare while standing in a pile of someone's guts. In case you were wondering, Dougal Dixon had revised his views on Tyrannosaurus by this time, noting that "scientists have reached a compromise: it was both a fast hunter and a scavenger". Hurrah!

There's nothing quite like a 1980s-style Spinosaurus - every bit as sweetly nostalgic to me as wrong-headed 'brontosaurs' (which were pretty much extinct by the time my childhood rolled around) are to slightly more well-worn older ladies and gents. Although far from the finest exemplar of the genre, the artist wins plaudits for the hilariously flattened individuals sunning themselves in the background.

More Baryonyx, and again the European spinosaur is treated to one of the book's lovelier illustrations. It's just unfortunate that the animal is only depicted in a quadrupedal stance, or this work might have aged a lot better. There's some iffy perspective work going on (that leg...hmmm), but the artist creates a lovely, painterly lakeside scene, not to mention wickedly glinting and pointy claws on the animals. The background Baryonyx has, of course, just used telekinesis to launch its fishy prey skywards with a summoning finger. After all, as Dixon points out, "Baryonyx breaks all the rules for flesh-eating dinosaurs!". Quite fitting for the '80s, really - it's totally radical, dude!

Perhaps my favourite illustration in this book, simply because it's quite 'radical' itself, is a tiny little thing positioned in the shadow of a huge scaly Deinonychus (that's clearly, uh, inspired by a considerably earlier Bakker piece). Look - feathers! At last, the wild ideas of Bakker, Paul and the rest were filtering down to a truly mainstream audience. If only you knew, 1980s Dougal Dixon, if only you knew!

Finally, a truly evil, crazily patterned Compsognathus adopts a casual air by leaning against a plant while contemplating how to cruelly finish off its insect prey. Yes.

You might have noticed that I've only scanned pictures of theropods for this post, but that's because this book is really rather thick - and I fully intend on revisiting it down the line. After all, how could I not include Plateosaurus? Everyone loves Plateosaurus...

Dinosaurs: In Your Face! - review

If there is any palaeoartist whose work is inherently suited to 3D, then it's Luis Rey. Thanks to his use of bright colours and wild perspectives, Rey's work often seems to be jumping from the page anyway. The combination of Rey's face-meltingly bright dino art, Robert Bakker's exuberant enthusiasm and very silly glasses is simply irresistible, not to mention ingenious. This is not only a fantastic kids' book, but far too much fun for any adult with a geeky bone in their body.

As such, I just had to review it for LITC - and pose for the below photo, thus permanently reversing any gains that dinosaur enthusiasts have made in terms of public perception of their hobby. You are very welcome. (As usual, all images are copyright Random House and the artist and shouldn't be reproduced without their permission, unless it's for a review in which case you can get away with claiming fair use, right? Right?)

 Back to the task at hand. There are far too many dinosaur books aimed at children that are filled to the brim with terrible, terrible art - usually, these days, embarrassing digital stuff that ends up resembling concept art for an N64 game circa 1997. No doubt this is justified on the grounds that, hey, it's for kids, yeah? So, who cares? Well, damn it, children deserve good dinosaur books too. Although a lot of people aren't so fond of Luis Rey's style, he could never be accused of not doing his homework; in short, he knows his anatomy, and this is high-quality stuff. As is traditional, the book opens with a 'size comparison parade' of various giant dinosaurs, along with an elephant and, brilliantly, a human riding said elephant. It's beautifully executed, the 3D works excellently and Rey adds typical characterful touches, including a diminutive dromaeosaur and hypsilophodont running away to the left (out of frame here), both giving the viewer a knowing glance.

This book is an excellent showcase of Rey's work, and popping on the 3D glasses instantly turns the pictures into wonderful dioramas - in spite of the book's title, there are actually next to no 'poke-in-the-eye' moments. Instead, the effect tends to be of meticulously arranged cardboard cutouts, like a pop-up book you can't break - which is fine by me. If you're only really familiar with Rey from the Holtz encyclopedia or Dinosaur Art, his illustrations of non-dinosaur animals (including prehistoric humans, one of whom sports a rather Bakker-esque bushy beard) will be of great interest, especially as the drab colours of large mammals naturally force him to rein in his usual bold style.

As for the text - well, it's Bakker, so you probably already know what to expect. It can get a little twee at times, and he indulges in some plausible speculation that isn't signposted as such (see above), but then it is a children's book, and there is a need for the text to match up to Rey's exciting, dynamic illustrations. Being a palaeontologist, Bakker - like Holtz in his encyclopedia - has no qualms in explicitly stating that birds are dinosaurs (see below), which is definitely to be applauded in a book aimed at kids. Some people might take issue with his declaration that "modern-day birds are descendants of raptors", but it's perhaps worth considering that he could mean maniraptors as a whole as opposed to just dromaeosaurs. He should also be applauded for his frequent mentions, in characteristically lively prose, of the fossil evidence behind (most of) the assertions about dinosaur behaviour, which really adds to the exciting feel of the book - these events really happened. Fellow Brits will also find the pronunciation guides rather amusing ("pay-lee-uhn-TAH-luh-just", "GLIP-tuh-dahnz" - Americans, bless 'em).

If your delightful progeny are of the sort who get in my way when I'm visiting a natural history museum, and eat up any dinosaur books they can lay their hands on, then you absolutely have to buy them this book. Consider that an order. They'll absolutely bloody love it and, what's more, it's cheap for such a quality product - in the UK, under a fiver on Amazon. Even if you're a grown-up dinosaur fan with a healthy appreciation of lovely, vibrant palaeoart and good old-fashioned bi-colour 3D glasses with a scaly pattern printed on them, you're bound to have fun with this book. Let's face it, you'd only spend the money on bottles of ale otherwise, and they aren't good for you, you know. Or so I'm often told.

Please do heed this warning, however - this book does have one unutterably terrifying in-your-face 3D image, and it happens to be a sojourn into the darkest depths of the Uncanny Valley. I have semi-legally scanned it in the name of providing readers of this blog with an advanced warning - better you know it's coming, than to suddenly turn the page and be confronted with...that face.

Actually, I'm tempted to turn it into a Halloween mask. What do you think?

The big-bellied bird burglar

Here's a quick one just to keep things ticking over. I recently acquired a kids' book from 1975 entitled Prehistoric Monsters (the things I buy on eBay!), and was a little upset to discover that it was filled with the standard, mostly quite competent Burian and Zallinger rip-offs. Therefore, it didn't seem quite up to being reviewed here in full.

However, illustrator Graham Allen did furnish us with one rather remarkable piece. And here it is!

Now, I'll grant you that Ornitholestes was a slightly strange theropod anyway, but this is just fleeing at breakneck speed with the cake. It looks like it's made out of the disparate parts of several different creatures! Of course, it's also yet another entry for the Bird Grabbin' Ornitholestes Hall of Fame, complete with teeny-tiny Archaeopteryx. Literal artistic interpretations of dinosaurs' names can be rather fun; won't anyone consider drawing a T. rex dressed like Henry VIII? Pretty please. Make him nice and portly too.

So, sorry about the short 'picture of the day' post (not to mention that title - such crude alliteration being a great affront to the aesthetic sensibilities of the high-minded and literary gentlefolk to whom this blog is dedicated).  If it's any consolation, I've ordered - and plan on reviewing - Bakker/Rey's Dinosaurs - In Your Face!, and will be sure to feature suitable shots of me looking very silly in 3D glasses.

Chromosaurus!

Precisely the way to start off the weekend.

What's the best thing about this little video? Is it the funky little 80's beat? Is it the constantly open mouths, clean and pristine because metallic jaws are incapable of slavering? Is it the occasional unconvincing rumbles? The majestic way these chrome behemoths slap across digital salt pans?

....it's probably the funky 80's beat.

Props to io9.

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.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Age of Dinosaurs: A Photographic Record

A fairly unusual book for its time (although not unique - see, for example, the earlier Purnell's Book of Dinosaurs), The Age of Dinosaurs: A Photographic Record is not afraid to trumpet the supposed stunning realism that its miniature photography offers. In fact, the blurb on the back cover claims that "now we can travel back in time and observe how [dinosaurs] really lived...Never before has the age of dinosaurs been so realistically shown!" Quaint as the claim might seem these days, 28 years later, it's true that the scenes are wonderfully shot. The cover image is wonderfully striking, and creating a convincing silhouette shot is not as easy as it might seem.

I just have to get Tyrannosaurus out of the way first. Younger readers might suppose that the 'T. rex as obligate scavenger' hypothesis was something that Jack Horner came up with in the '90s to wind everyone up, but the idea is actually quite old. In fact, there was seemingly a phase in the late '70s to mid '80s when everyone decided that T. rex was actually a big toddling wuss with a mouth full of incredibly brittle teeth, and all you'd have to do to trump it in a fight was insult its mother in an arch fashion while calmly sipping tea (see Bev Halstead's work, for example). This trend is continued here, with Dixon claiming that

"The leg joints and position of the feet show that it could take only very short steps...[its teeth] were very thin and would have been easily broken in any kind of fight."

What? I mean...what!?!

Never mind, though - we're really here to talk about the photography. In each case, Dixon sets the scene - here we are told that this T. wuss is 'waddling' along by a soda lake looking for the next free meal, while "flamingo-like" (ahem) birds fly past "as if it were a rocky outcrop". Nevertheless, the model hasn't aged as badly as it might have, and it's beautifully photographed; the misty effect is lovely, and there's a decent illusion of scale and depth. The relative tranquility of this scene is quite welcome, too - it's a rather dignified portrait of the animal (unlike the text).

If it's action you want, you'll have to turn to Deinonychus. Again, the real skill of the photographer here is combining the disparate elements (namely, the models in the foreground and the painted backdrop) and making it all look convincing. I remember seeing these models in other dinosaur books back in the '90s, and for the time they're very good - not overly reptilian, and I love the way they appear to have been frozen in the middle of a scrap. The poses are just fantastic. It's worth mentioning that, while Jane Burton is (of course) credited for the photography in this book, it's Steve Kirk who was apparently behind many, if not all of the models.

It might be 1984, but you can still count on one feathered theropod - Archaeopteryx. It hasn't scanned very well, but take my word for it - this is a beautiful scene, and the animal looks stunning in its glossy pied plumage. It's a shame about the stick-on mini-hands (or is that polydactyly?), but still - a wonderfully crafted model. I'm especially fond of the subdued, autumnal lighting and tones (which contrast with the monochrome subject) and the shower of leaves.

Saltopus - it's a name that is impossible to say without hissing like a half-baked villain from a kids' TV show. There's just no way of resisssting it. Cursessss! Anyway, this is one of my favourite images in the book, as it genuinely appears as if the photographer has happened upon this animal going about its business in the night, catching a fortuitous snap before it scarpered back into the undergrowth. The lighting is superb, the creature (and its prey) are very convincing, and hey - it's quite an unusual subject, too. This animal is either a very basal theropod or not a dinosaur at all - rather, a dinosauriform. Unfortunately, it is only known from very fragmentary remains.

Another of my favourites is this shot of Hypsilophodon and Iguanodon - its creation of a convincing sense of scale is remarkable, as is the apparent motion of the very delicate-looking Hypsilophodon. Quite lovely.

One of the less convincing images in the book is this shot of two Ceratosaurus against rather dramatic red lightning. One almost expects them to be fighting with Dracula and Frankenstein's monster - actually, given the sort of movies that Hammer Horror made in the '60s and '70s, I'm surprised this has never happened. Dracula v. Frankenstein v. the Wolf Man v. dinosaurs? Yeah! Just picture Christopher Lee swooshing his cape around in front of a Ray Harryhausen beastie. It would be spectacular.

There aren't very many sauropods in this book, perhaps because their enormous size makes it very difficult to pass off scale models as the real thing. These Diplodocus (necks) are one such attempt, and they look a little bizarre - like rather shapeless grey hosepipes, or some nutty art installation in the woods. Still, one is able to appreciate the use of a very tricky and unusual perspective, which is likely to distort these animals to cartoonish extremes even when they are anatomically correct to modern standards. There is also, once again, an excellent unification of lighting in both the background and models. The text here is quite entertaining, too, as Dixon has some ideas about these animals' anatomy that seem quite charmingly old-fashioned now:

"The tail vertebrae had downward projecting arms with skids at the ends. These probably protected the nerves and blood vessels of the tail as it dragged on the ground."

"The whiplash tail evolved as a natural tripping hazard for the giant carnosaurs of the day," he doesn't go on to add. 

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know by now that I have a soft spot for outdated reconstructions of Spinosaurus. It's mostly down to nostalgia - they were still about in the '90s - but it also provides a pertinent lesson in just how easy it is to misidentify an animal based on relatively scanty remains. These restorations made good sense in their day - there was little indication of just how strange this animal really looked, prior to the discovery of other spinosaurs and, of course, additional material. The 'carnosaur-headed' creature shown here is very typical and certainly sculpted well enough, even if the skin texture is a little crude. The birds are a nice touch, even if one could argue that they're basically just models of modern Leptoptilos storks. The dusky lighting here is particularly pleasing, giving an impression of a parched landscape while actually showing very little.

That just about wraps it up for now! There are many more images in this book of course, and I may well have to revisit it somewhen down the line. One final thing: I feel obliged to point out that Dougal Dixon has revised his thinking since 1984!

The Evolution of Utahraptor

I love how the shiny digital future has opened up so many artists' processes to a wider audience. A primary message I impart to my students - which I pummel them with all the time - is how important it is to invite critique throughout the creative process. I teach graphic design, but it's a practice that can certainly apply to other disciplines. All sorts of artists can share the development of their work as it evolves beyond a peer group at hand. It's not for everyone, of course, but I appreciate being able to look behind the curtain. It enhances my appreciation rather than ruining the mystique of the vaunted final artifact.

So here's a new version of Utahraptor, shared by Paul Heaston at Flickr.



A previous draft received some constructive criticism from Mike Keesey.

Really nice work -- I like how you've done the leg feathers. There should probably be primary feathers attached along the second manual digit, not just the ulna. (Obviously, we don't know for sure for Utahraptor, but that's how it is for other winged maniraptors.)

So cool to see. More from Paul at his blog, and of course my recent interview with him. And this isn't the first time I expressed this sentiment about Paul's work. This Utahraptor was just too cool to not post.

Update 9/13/12:
As Paul notes in the comments to this post, he will almost certainly be revising this further - something a lot of Utahraptor artists will be doing. Followers of the Dinosaur Mailing List have been hearing about stunning new Utahraptor material in prep for a while now, and Scott Hartman has seen it. He writes on the DeviantArt page for the skeletal diagram Paul used for this piece:

Important programming note: Do not restore the current skeletal reconstruction. Utahraptor does NOT look like this. It's stranger and less Deinonychus-like than I realized. Unfortunately I can't share the changes with you just now, but I didn't want anyone else to put time and effort into restoring Utahraptor from an outdated skeletal. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Cannot wait to see how Utahraptor changes with this new research.

Interview With Steve White

Recently, we here at LITC did a tag team review of the recent Dinosaur Art, a ponderous tome of paleontological renderings and antediluvian art pieces. Despite some issues with the book, we agreed that it was a gorgeous bit of work and a very nice accomplishment. Still, we had some questions. And who better to answer them then the book's mastermind himself? 

Steve White has been a comics writer and editor for a long time, working on Marvel UK's comics line and writing for 2000 AD and other British comics magazines. He's also an excellent, dynamic artist in his own right, with interests that range from pulp to paleoart. He blogs at Thunderlizard, currently edits the licensed comics The Simpsons and Transformers, and has an inordinate fondness for Triceratops. Steve was kind enough to take some time to answer a few questions about the book, where he sees paleoart going, and his own artistic sensibilities. 

Steve, how has your work in the comics industry affected your taste in paleoart?

I think it's tended to make me a little over-zealous when it comes to dynamism in my own artwork – I guess that was how Dan Varner came to call me the 'John Milius of paleoart' when he was describing a marine feeding frenzy I did a few years back – I'm hoping he meant in the Conan sense and not in the Red Dawn sense. I always had this theory that I should have as few feet on the ground as possible and have my subjects at crazy angles like they were taking corners at high speed. Also lots of dust and debris being kicked up. Two of my favourite artists are Frank Frazetta and Berni Wrightson, both of whom included dinosaurs as a matter of course in their work. I'm also a huge fan of Mark Schultz (Cadillacs & Dinosaurs) - another dinosaur aficionado whose work, especially his Centrosaurus pieces, are wonderful. I guess I look for a similar sense of dynamic action in paleoart. I still think Charles Knight's leaping Laelaps are incredible, even now, a century on, and it's what drew me to Greg Paul and Bob Bakker's work in the '70s - they had great motion in their work. I suspect this is all driven by my love of comics.

 © Steve White

Dinosaur Art contains a wide and interesting variety of artists. How did you decide whom to pick, and why did you chose the specific ones you did? 

Hmm. This was always going to be difficult. From the moment the book was conceived I had a rough list of artists I wanted to include. I asked everyone on it assuming there would be a percentage that would decline, and that did indeed turn out to be the case. As such, there have been a number of comments on the book saying so-and-so was was left off or not included. Well, pretty much everyone mentioned was asked and declined for whatever reason; to have got the book I truly wanted would have cost a lot more money and been twice as large! But no one was deliberately missed off. And of course you're never going to please all the people all the time. Luis Rey has a style not to everyone's taste yet so many people have said me he is their favorite.

If this sounds a little defensive, it probably is. I think we performed a minor miracle in getting this book out at all and everyone involved went way about and beyond what was needed. And on a personal note, I took great satisfaction when some people said "You'll never get Greg Paul," when ironically he was one of the first to come back and say, "Yep, that's doable." To me he was the most important artist to get in the book simply because his influence has been so prevalent in paleoart. I can't believe anyone would think otherwise.

So how was the art for each artist chosen? 

That was actually the greatest part of the book for me. We had so much art that went unused and in some cases there were some very tough choices to make. A few of my personal favourites didn't make it in. But generally, the artists would send in their personal selection and then I would make a folder called 'priority' – it was like battlefield triage, picking the ones I thought should make the final cut! The choices were usually based on things like rarity – wherever possible, I didn't really want images that were pretty well known (of course, we did succumb to that on a few occasions); I also tried to select of mix of common animals that would be well known to the general public, and newer or less well known types in an attempt to try and offer something to everyone.

 Once the choices had been made and the pages laid out, I would send a PDF of the section to each individual artist for comments. In a few cases we made changes, including a very late substitution when Unescoceratops and Gryphoceratops were unveiled using a lovely piece of Julius Csotonyi's art. I really wanted that included and it was dropped in on the day before the book went to press!

 © Steve White

Dinosaur Art seems to split the middle ground between un-annotated finished art and process sketches.  Could you go a little bit into the process behind how the book was edited and put together?

 From the start, there was some discussion over whether this was an art book about dinosaurs or a dinosaur book that happened to include a lot of art. The former won out because that was the editorial tack I was going to take; from the the start I had wanted to include the Q&As, but to give it a certain intellectual weight, we included the animal spotlight sections. I also figured there'd be a certain amount of academic discussion within the Q&As as a matter of course, the point being that paleoart is art and science more or less hand-in-hand. I also made it clear that this wasn't going to be just dino-centric, hence the inclusion of Mauricio Anton and the focus on pterosaurs in John Conway's section (again, this seems to have ruffled a few feathers, so to speak, with regard to the book's title, but again, we had to include 'dinosaur' in the title; you have to be realistic and go with what sells - this was after all a generalist, populist book). 

So, with the notion that it was going to be an art book, it seemed to only natural that the art should reflect the text – I was keen to discuss style and method with the artists so showing the stages of their work made a lot of sense. What was interesting was the different approaches to this amongst the artists. Some, such as  John Sibbick, Doug Henderson and Todd Marshall, had masses of extraneous material – sketches, roughs, spot illustrations, everything – that enabled us to show stage-by-stage development of their artwork. That was definitely an area we could have expanded on. Some, however, had no developmental work or were not interested in showing it; to them, the end result was all that mattered. 

The actual nuts of bolts of the editing process involved myself, my in-house editor, Jo Boylett, and the book's designer, Barry Spiers (I am actual senior comics editor at Titan so this was something I did freelance for the company). Both underwent a crash course in paleontology during the editing, which actually was completed in about three months – January to March 2012. Prior to that I had subbed and proofed and formated the Q&As, and sorted the initial selection of art. Once the format was decided upon we were given the nod and away we went. I was terrified we'd never make it yet somehow the whole thing seemed to go relatively smoothly. Considering some of the work I've done – where you close to going postal by the end – it was a joy to behold and Jo and Barry performed miracles to produce what I think is a thing of beauty. The icing on the cake was the advance copies arrived on my birthday! I discovered how it feels to be a father!

Was there anything you wish you could have done with the book that you couldn't? What would you like to see in a followup?

Well, as I mentioned before, there are several artists I wished had decided to get involved. On reflection, I also really should have included female artists and at least one sculptor – I hope to rectify that if and when we do a second volume. Which segues quite nicely into the book's title which is rather definitive, but sure I can work around it!

I was talking to Dave Hone recently after he had reviewed the book and he made an interesting suggestion – one that I had touched on but hadn't really followed through with. He thought it would have been fascinating to include reconstructions of the same animal by different artists, on the same spread. It would give you a more immediate look at how different artists approach the same problem of illustrating the same extinct organism. I had Gigantoraptor in mind when I was thinking about it – illustrated by both Luis Rey and Raul Martin. But that would definitely be an interesting concept. Looking back I think I'd want to include more stage-by-stage developmental work as well. Something else would be the inclusion of new technology such as augmented reality - an app where you wave your smartphone over an icon on the page and it downloads extra material to your phone. You could include actual tutorials with the artists or interviews, that sort of thing.

 © Steve White

Building off that, there seemed to be a heavy emphasis on digital art in many sections. Was this a conscious decision? 

No, not as such. Some of the artists had begun to produce digital art as a matter of course – Julius, Raul, Luis, Bob Nicholls, Mauricio, John Conway. In some cases, it was the bulk of their work so I was naturally inclined to use more of it; in other cases, such as Bob and Luis, I used a more balanced mix. In Bob's section I think I was about a 50/50 split, although the largest images printed were his traditional work. But again, I wanted to use a lot of digital stuff to emphasis the various approaches to using software as an art tool. 

Where do you, personally, see Paleoart headed in the future? 

I guess the book proves that digital seems to be the way forward. I like to think that some of the Old Guard will continue using traditional methods (I know I will...), but already several have made the switch, while the new generation have more or less put aside basic traditional tools and are using graphics pads and Photoshop as their starting points. I think this is a good thing because it will spare us from some of the truly dreadful digital art that blighted popular dinosaur art in the fallout from Walking With Dinosaurs. We'll have new paleoartists completely proficient in the digital medium as opposed to computer artists trying to draw dinosaurs. It's also been interesting to see the likes of John Conway moving into animation. With that sort of technology and software becoming freely available, I would assume it's only a matter of time before paleoartists are not only producing digital art but digital animations. 

Finally, what up-and-coming young paleoartists do you have your eye on? 

Well, I recently joined DeviantArt and that has been a total eye-opener. In the course of my explorations, I've come across some amazing artists. I'm a big fan of Andrey Atuchin, Julio Lacerda and Michele The-Sea in particular, but there's so many I could choose from. I suspect Dinosaur Art: The Next Generation beckons...

 © Steve White

And there you have it, folks. Many thanks to Steve White for agreeing to this interview. His various art and musings can be seen in their majestic native habitat over at Thunderlizard. 

Dryptosaurus for the Digital Age

Paleontology is a field full of holes. There are gaps in the fossil record obscuring evolutionary transitions, and most of the taxa we know and love are not known from complete remains. Then, there's the lag between a taxon's discovery and comprehensive study of its fossils, which can take decades. Dryptosaurus, the New Jersey tyrannosauroid formerly known as Laelaps, is one of those obscure animals that languished for years, thankfully receiving more attention recently, employing today's more robust paleontological methods. Last year, a new assessment of Dryptosaurus was published by Steve Brusatte, Mark Norell, and Roger Benson. Tyler Keillor, an Illinois paleoartist, is setting out to build on the study substantially. With Kickstarter, the crowd-funding platform, he's attempting to raise the money to create a high-quality, accurate reconstruction of Dryptosaurus.

He writes:

My Kickstarter plan is to create the most realistic, accurate, and up to date life-reconstruction of the predatory dinosaur Dryptosaurus. Surpassing the traditionally sculpted life-sized dinosaur busts I've become known for, this will be a full body digital sculpture. I will use the latest paleontological information as the foundation for my creation, and have my work reviewed for accuracy by paleontologist Steve Brusatte, lead author of the most current in-depth study of Dryptosaurus. My references will also include discussions with paleontologist and theropod expert Dr. Thomas Carr.

This is a potentially powerful way for paleoartists to make important contributions to public knowledge without having to rely on commissions or commercial projects, so it would be amazing if paleontology enthusiasts contributed en masse. Here's Keillor's video pitch, part of the requirement for launching a Kickstarter campaign.



Again, check out Keillor's Kickstarter campaign page. If you're unfamiliar with Kickstarter, keep in mind that your pledge will only be required if the project goal - in this case $6,000 US - is met. In the few days since the campaign began, Keillor has reached just over half of his goal. He has until October 7 to make the remaining $3,000. Thanks to Domain of the C-Rex for the tip off.