Trish Babbles: April 2014

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Let's Finish Reading the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder!

Continuing our journey through the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder written by Dr. Michael Benton and published by Kingfisher books in 1992. The color illustrations are by Jim Channell and David Holmes, and line illustrations are by Kevin Maddison and Ralph Orme. As a few readers have mentioned, some of the illustrations were featured in Orbis Publishing's Dinosaurs magazine. I've previously experienced one of the massive compilations of that magazine and boy was it an adventure.

Anyway, look at that Oviraptor! Look at it!

As I said before, Ornithopods come off very badly in this book. This ugly-ass Parasaurolophus is a low point.

While it's nice to have a (not horizontal but still) bipedal Prosauropod, this is all I can see:

Is it me or is Pliohippus here downright sinister-looking? Like something horsey and unpleasant from Celtic folklore.

There's something super cute about these overly beaky Protoceratopses.

I think I used that Freak Deer gif too soon...

I'll admit part of my inordinate love for Therizinosaurs (or Segnosaurs) is based on the fact that nobody had any idea what to make of these guys for years. Freaky fish-guy Segnosaurus is one of my favorite largely forgotten paleoart memes, but in this book it takes a back-seat to this family tree:

Ahahaha, oh wow.

A fairly jolly-looking Styracosaurus, though he seems to have been drawn by someone who had only a vague idea of what the beast looked like.

Ah, Supersaurus. Again, this page pretty much speaks for itself.

And the Syntarsus illustration that led to me finding this book again. What's up, old buddy?

And finally, we'll end our journey with these... less than majestic-looking Tyrannosauruses. Those limbs...

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Sketch of the Day! I've given it some thought, and I have realized that of all the "You really had to be there" moments I've ever experienced on the Internet, Twitch Plays Pokemon is at least in the top five "You REALLY had to be there"-est. (We'll never forget you, Zexxy.)

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Let's Keep Reading the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder!

Continuing our journey through the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder written by Dr. Michael Benton and published by Kingfisher books in 1992. The color illustrations are by Jim Channell and David Holmes, and line illustrations are by Kevin Maddison and Ralph Orme.

We're confronted by a pack of extremely 80's-looking Deinonychosaurs. These guys are not nearly as fascinating as the accompanying Deinonychosaur family tree graphic, which is a relic from the days when you could be suspected of being part of this family if you happened to have large claws. Behold!

You're looking good there, Gastornis.

Moving away from dinosaurs for a moment, we have this Dimetrodon, who looks positively cuddly. Like an ugly-cute puppy.

Here's Gallimimus sporting a very odd-looking beak...

And Hadrosaurus sporting seemingly no beak at all. She's anatomically off anyway, but that head...

Honestly, Ornithopods, like this parroty Hypsilophodon, make out pretty bad overall in this book. Brace yourselves for this next one:

Those hands...

Here are a couple of full-text pages that kind of speak for themselves. Though the first one at least solves a mystery from an earlier post.

Finally, I want these guys to star in a children's book entitled, The Grouchy Ichtyhyosaurs:

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Sketch of the Day! Cute Monster Girl style Medusa for Sketch Dailies:

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Let's Read the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder!

It feels like it's been forever since I did a Vintage Paleoart post doesn't it? I have a sharp-eyed reader to thank for this one. Over at DeviantArt, Spongebob Fossilpants correctly identified an illustration from my Syntarsus post as being from the Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Animal Fact Finder written by Dr. Michael Benton and published by Kingfisher books in 1992. I ordered a new copy of the book right away, because this was my go-to dinosaur reference book for many years.

Let's jump right in. The color illustrations are by Jim Channell and David Holmes, and line illustrations are by Kevin Maddison and Ralph Orme. According to the copyright notice in the book, some of them date back to 1988. That might help explain a few things, for example, this:

Do you remember a time when we used to classify big burly theropods as Carnosaurs and little wiry theropods as Coelurosaurs? Cause this book sure does.

Note also the odd silhouettes for Prosauropoda and Ornithopoda, as well as Segnosaurs. The latter is a topic for another day.

The book is arranged in alphabetical order and has a nice balance of popular and unpopular animals illustrated. And they are all very weird looking, even by the standards of late-80's/early-90's dinosaur books. Acanthopholis looks a little embarrassed to be here.

As does Albertosaurus. He's basically drawn here as "A T. rex, but smaller. Except not really that much smaller, if we're to believe that scale graphic."

And here's good old Allosaurus in full on "A T. rex but with more fingers" mode. Man, poor Allosaurus.

Here's a truly strange one. Euoplocephalus confidently identified as Anklosaurus. I distinctly remember a shift in dinosaur books where they tended to swap out Ankylosaurus for (correctly identified) Euoplocephalus as their token ankylosaur. And I can't help but suspect it's because Euoplocephalus, while harder to pronounce, is way easier to draw.

Archeopteryx strutting her stuff and showing off the creepy little hands growing out of her wings. Because that is totally how avian wings work. At least she isn't a Sparkleraptor this time out.

Turns out Avaceratops probably did not look like a thing like this outside of being a smallish ceratopsian. What really got me with this illustration, though, was that beak! We're going to be seeing a few dinosaurs with crazy-looking beaks in this book.

Good old Quadrupedal Baryonyx! I can't get over how bizarre this looks in hindsight.

Reminder: all big, burly theropods are Carnosaurs. If you want to draw a specific genre, just swap out the heads and hands and maybe add a horn or a sail.

Poor Ceratosaurus suffered terribly from that method, didn't he? Where are your teeth, buddy?

I admire how adamantly old-school this Coelophysis illustration is. The dragging tail, the vaguely creepy snout, those dainty hands and feet...

I will leave you with Supposed Giant Murderbeast Deinocheirus. Because there isn't anything not to love about this.

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Sketch of the Day! Here's a Heffalump for Sketch Dailies:

Saturday, April 12, 2014

The Princess Project Introduction and Index

Ah, the Disney Princess franchise. The whole shebang was started in the early 2000's by Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney after -this is true- a trip to a Disney on Ice show where he saw little girls wearing unlicensed Disney character costumes and immediately saw dollar signs an untapped market. And let me emphasize that this in itself was not a bad idea. In fact, it was pretty awesome in theory. After all, there are very few older films that either sport a female main character or are primarily directed at young girls that are still being marketed today (the only other one I can think of is "Wizard of OZ").

The problem is the specific way in which the Princesses are marketed. They're completely divorced from their films, making them folklore-based characters who've found themselves without stories. There are no happy endings to earn, no conflicts to resolve, just creepily vacant stares and sparkles.

And that is worthy of criticism, but unfortunately many vocal critics have equated the Princess Franchise versions of the characters with their very different film counterparts. It's almost impressive how often critics are blatantly wrong about what actually happens in the films. (Honestly, everyone gets the sequence of events in "The Little Mermaid" wrong.)

As a lover of animation, and a Disney fan, I wanted to help set the record straight when it came to the Disney Princess characters themselves. The simplest way to do this, it seemed, was to go right to the source: rewatch each of the films in which the Princesses first appear and keep track of certain things they've come under heavy criticism for. (It turns out that watching all these films in order is also an efficient "Speed Run" version of the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation I got during the Chronological Disney Animated Canon project years ago.)

I was originally planning on watching each film and writing an analysis, but doing live Tweet-commentaries -Tweetmentaries, if you will- on them turned out to be more fun. It also brought in an element of audience participation. And I wound up reconsidering some of the films (as we shall see, there is one film where my opinion was almost completely flipped).

* - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

* - "Cinderella"

* - "Sleeping Beauty"

* - "The Little Mermaid"

* - "Beauty and the Beast"

* - "Pocahontas"

* - "Mulan"

* - "The Princess and the Frog"

* - "Tangled"

* - "Brave"

* - "Aladdin"

* - "Frozen"

* - "Moana"

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More Animation Marathons

* - The Chronological Disney Animated Canon

* - Don Bluth Month

* - Dreamworks' "Tradigitals"

* - The Short Animation Blogathon

* - My Summer of Sequels

* - Random 90's Animation