"Now wait, Trish. I know you've gone on and on about how you need to sketch animals from life whenever the opportunity presents itself, but isn't sketching from a documentary cheating?" Well... that's up to you. The fact is, some people might not have a decent zoo or natural history museum near them, and it's absurdly difficult to find good motion and/or anatomical reference on certain species. Since my heart belongs to winged theropods, an entire documentary about wild turkeys and their life cycle was too good an opportunity to pass up. I apologize if the notes are a little hard to read, but I originally wasn't planning on sharing these here. The first picture has one note that's kind of important though:
In the bottom-right of this page I have some notes on feather tracts. Note that the spine is essentially bare. A little while ago on Twitter, Aaron Diaz of "Dresden Codak" expressed his annoyance at artists drawing known species of feathered theropods with a handfull of quills running down the spine and calling it a day. Since he's mentioned that, I'm seeing that everywhere. And as you can plainly see, it's physically impossible. Go figure.
I also don't know what's up with that one kid in the beginning of "Jurassic Park". A six-foot version of one of these things would be horrifying.
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A Few Links of Interest:
* I want to see how many people who don't know much about animation I can convince this was an actual 80's cartoon.
* Speaking of 80's cartoons, check out Comics Alliances' rundown of the craziest episodes of "Jem".
* These quilled paper illustrations are amazing and kind of insane.
* Topless Robot has a great primer on Douglas Adams' work.
* There is apparently a football game happening this weekend and I have reason to be emotionally invested in it as the Patriots are involved. Eh. Let's all watch this collection of remarkably ill-conceived halftime shows instead. So many weird Disney cross-promotions...
* More importantly, the Annie Awards are tomorrow night, and Cartoon Brew will be streaming them at 10:00 PM EST!
