"Awwwww...!" - "Animal Odd Couples" Sketches

How about some more sketches I drew while watching "Nature"?  These are all from the episode "Animal Odd-Couples", with a couple of bonus sketches from "Magic of the Snowy Owls".

"It's So FLUFFY!!!" - "An Original Duck-umentary" Sketches

Longtime readers were probably expecting this one.  Without further ado, here are the sketches I drew during the "Nature" episode "An Original Duck-umentary":







If you missed it, this episode was nearly as excellent as "My Life as a Turkey".  Speaking of, that episode should be repeating tonight depending on your PBS affiliate.  This weekend is all about extant theropods anyway, so check both episodes out!

Let's Read The _Prehistoric World_ Series part two

Continuing our journey through four books in the Prehistoric World series written by Virginia Schomp and published between 2003-2006 by the Marshall Cavendish Corporation.  Today, we'll have a look at 2003's Velociraptor and Other Small, Speedy Meat-Eaters.

We've had a lot of fun with outdated depictions of deinonychids over the years, but this book sports some of the most incredibly unpretty depictions of our favorite maniraptors I have ever seen:



Oh my... These guys look like they'd be happier menacing Gelflings. And, er, that's an unfortunate angle on the rightmost 'raptor.

Then again, you have the fellow in the lower-right here:



Granted, everyone's proportions are very very wrong. We've seen worse -much worse- deinonychusaurs to be fair, but these guys are pretty bad. To be fair, they do all look better than this bizarre Sinosauropteryx:



The Velociraptor book also includes an illustration of two really ugly, almost bulldog-looking Deinonychuses, which is recycled here in Archaeopteryx and Other Flying Dinosaurs from 2004:



Archaeopteryx is certainly the strangest book in the collection, seeing as we didn't have the vast galloping herds of very birdlike dinosaurs we all know today. We kick things off with a really ugly Mononychus:



And before the ride is over, we get a detour from the dinosaurs to look at a very strange Pteronodon.  That beak...:



But we also get a very nice painting of the Enantiornithine Gobipteryx:



I have no idea how accurate this is, but this is just the kind of paleoart I love. It's gorgeous, and would not look one bit out of place in a field guide for modern-day theropods.

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Art of the Day!

Magnemites are cool. World Showcase is cool. And the "Magnemigration" is very cool:

Theropods for Thanksgiving - Let's Read The _Prehistoric World_ Series!

Well, we're going to read some of the books in the Prehistoric World series, since my library had a very extensive collection of them. All of these books were written by Virginia Schomp and published between 2003-2006 by the Marshall Cavendish Corporation. Sadly, individual artists are not credited. And all books feature this disclaimer in the credits page:



Methinks more dinosaur-related media could use something like that.

We're going to start with Ornithomimus and Other Speedy "Ostrich Dinosaurs" from 2006. It's timely indeed because here's how the book starts out:



Yeah... about that...

In light of recent revelations, it is worth noting that this, exactly this, is how Ornithomimids were explained, with no variation at all, in every dinosaur book ever. Often, the point would be emphasized with an illustration like this one:



Hmm... for some reason the pose and color scheme on that ornithomimid looks familiar. Well, never mind that now. Here's a really gross version of the "egg-eating Struthiomimus" meme:



Lastly, here's a very strange theory illustrated: fish-eating ornithomimids! What?



Therizinosaurs and Other Colossal-Clawed Plant-Eaters, published in 2006, gives us this memorably ugly depiction of one of my favorite dinosaurs. Seriously, what the hell?



For it's next trick, the book declares that the ever-mysterious Deinocheirus, generally agreed to be an ornithomimid, was a therizinosaur!?



Next post, more outdated maniraptors.

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Sketch of the day!

Have some gesture drawings from election night!

Progress Sketches and Paintings of my Illustrations for "An Essential Field Guide to North American Earthquake Beasts"

Over the summer, David Bressan, the author of the Scientific American blog History of Geology, asked me to create illustrations to accompany his upcoming article about legendary creatures said to cause earthquakes.  I gladly agreed.  He sent me descriptions of the creatures he was thinking of writing about, and I had great fun visualizing them.



Here's the initial sketch for the A'yaho, a fierce monster who often appears as a deer-snake-dragon thing. I had a lot of fun designing him, and the final version is almost identical to the bottom drawing; I just had to give him a more ferocious expression.



As you can see, I nailed the Giant Toad's character design pretty early. He's almost identical in the final painting!



Interestingly, Thunderbird and Monster Whale were the only Earthquake Beasts who gave me trouble, at least initially. It isn't often you get the opportunity to draw something as awesome as two gigantic elemental beings at war, but it took me a few tries to figure out how to best depict their battle. I decided on the lower-left idea, since it actually shows the earthquake happening.



And here's a cleaner drawing of that lower-left idea with regrettable and rather garish digital coloring. This was the style I was initially going to do the final illustrations in, but after finishing this version of the Thunderbird/Whale battle, I decided that style did not fit the creatures at all. I decided to go with good old watercolors instead.



I drew the illustrations very lightly in pencil, and went over that with a watercolor wash.



I inked the outlines, did some details in colored pencils, and did as little cleanup as possible in Photoshop. If you compare the two images, you'll notice that Thunderbird and Whale had the most extensive Photoshoppery, mostly in adjusting their scale.



Here's the initial painting of A'yaho...



And the very-close-to-final-version.



The initial painting of Giant Toad...



And the very-close-to-final-version. I say very-close-to-final-version because these versions needed a little bit of size adjustment before they were ready to publish.

I want to thank David once again for this terrific opportunity.  If you haven't read it yet, here's the article with the final versions of these illustrations: An Essential Field Guide to North American Earthquake Beasts

The Triumphant Return of Fird and the Firffels!

Look at what came in the mail last week!

Okay, this might take some explanation, especially if you're new to the blog.

Way back in the first year, one of the most popular posts I wrote mentioned the Firffels and my assumed history of the toy line. Many comments suggested I was very wrong about the Fiffels and that they had a much more interesting history. I made a follow-up post which itself became very popular. Sadly, it didn't look like there was any more to learn about the Firffels, since the book that introduced the characters, Whoever Heard of a Fird, was long out of print and what copies popped up as available were very expensive.

Well, a few weeks ago, I received the following email:

Hi there.

I was looking at your blog. My name is Shann Hurst, I'm an illustrator. I thought you might be interested to know that I've been working with Othello Bach and we're re-releasing "Whoever Heard Of A Fird?" Actually it's out and on sale now. Anyway, It's something we've really put a lot of work into and we're really excited about how it's turning out. If you have time, you're invited to look at the official website: www.whoeverheardofafird.com

Let me know how you like it.

Shann Hurst

www.wishenginestudio.com

I thanked Shann Hurst and ordered the book right away.  It took a while to arrive, which implies that it must be pretty popular and there's a lot of nostalgia for these characters.

And now that I've just finally read the book, I can see why.  The message is simple: be yourself.  But everything else in the book is so unusual and fun that the moral doesn't feel like a pill.

First off, obviously, the characters are all delightfully bizarre.  Boogie monsters, Panducks, Kangaroctopi, it's clear that Othello Bach had a lot of fun coming up with these creatures and Shann Hurst must have had a lot of fun drawing them.  Hurst's style itself is very unusual and almost surreal, and it fits the menagerie of friendly freaks.

Othello's writing is highly unique as well.  The book is much more text-heavy than I thought it would be, but it never feels bloated.  A lot of text is given over to poems and songs, some of which get downright philosophical.  And some of them are just fun.



My prediction is that kids -especially weird kids- are going to embrace this new edition of Whoever Heard of a Fird.  Hopefully, it'll renew interest in Othello Bach's characters.

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Sketch of the Day