I just filled a sketchbook for Art Evolved's Pink Dinosaur Project, which ran through the month of October. You can see all the images I created in this Flickr set.
I'm so proud and touched by my fellow Art Evolved-ers. So far this project has been a real life Crowning Moment of Heartwarming (the second one in a month for us!) Having hit 182 pink creatures of the Ornithodiran* persuasion by Halloween, Peter Bond announced that we'll keep the effort going until this coming Wednesday (November 10). So draw your favorite dinosaur, paint the sucker pink, and send it in please!
You could even go crazy like I did and try to create a three-dimensional pink dinosaur...
That's where these lovely ladies fit in. These are former Fairy Tails. Fairy Tails were an unusual toy line that appeared in the wake of My Little Pony circa 1987. Unlike most toys of the era meant to ride the Pony wave, Fairy Tails were made by Hasbro themselves. This may be the main reason why they are often mistakenly thought of as a part of the My Little Pony line, rather than a different toy line entirely.
These little doves had long hair that you could comb and style growing from their tails and heads. They also had symbols painted on to help identify them -- just like My Little Ponies do. And they came with perches to sit on. Their feet were designed like little clamps, and you were supposed to have them perch on your fingers as you styled their hair. That's one for the great annals of badly-thought-out toy designs. The fact that actually clamping one of these birds to your finger hurts like hell may be the main reason why this toy line failed.
Another, more obvious possible reason is the fact that birds with hair = freaky.
These two Fairy Tails lost their head-hair, had their tails cut, and had other flaws. I had no luck auctioning them off on eBay, so I decided, since they were pretty pinkish to start with, to have a go at customizing them.
I learned very quickly why you almost never see anyone customize "Fairy Tails"...
Nonetheless, these two turned out better than I expected. I am deeply indebted to this tutorial and I enjoy finally seeing Fairy Tails with actual feathers. These two will be auctioned for charity probably around the same time as the Pink Dinosaur Sketchbook. I plan on putting everything up on eBay possibly the weekend after next, so look out for an announcement.
In the meantime, shirts! And different shirts! And hats! And somewhat less successful hats!
* - There's a good vocabulary word to add to your daily usage. It literally means "birdlike neck" and includes all dinosaurs biologically defined as such -- AND Pterosaurs. See how useful that is?
