The "Jurassic World" Challenge!

Believe it or else, a fourth "Jurassic Park" movie is a thing that is happening and will be among us very soon. A great deal of ink, sweat, spit, blood, and feathers have flown in the paleontological community about this upcoming film. Personally, I think it looks like either hot garbage or a complete and utter sh*tshow, and I can think of at least five other movies I'd rather see this summer but haven't gotten around to yet. (I would also rather kick myself in the head than watch "Jurassic 4: The Legend of Hammond's Gold" but whatever.)

But instead of getting angry about dinosaur movies, why don't we channel that energy into a force for good? Our buddy David Orr at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs explains:

So here is an idea. It's pretty simple. I call it the Jurassic World Challenge. If you're buying a ticket for the movie, it's a fair bet that you also have that much money to give to the people who bring prehistory to life in the real world. Think of it as a matching fund, crowdsourced. See the movie, do some good. The official rules:

Donate the equivalent of your Jurassic World ticket price to paleontological research

or

Spend the equivalent of your ticket price on the wares of an independent paleoartist


Of course, you don't have to pick one or the other. Buy some art, give some money to a research effort, enjoy the movie.

There is a handy list of charities over at Chasmosaurs and nearly every paleoartist I know has a DeviantArt, Red Bubble, or whatever shop.  And yes, I helped.

All Yesterdays Contest!

Irregular Books has announced a contest inspired by Shut Up and Take Tricia's Money: The Book All Yesterdays.  Art Evolved has the details, and here's the official announcement, via Nemo Ramjet's DeviantArt:

All Yesterdays Contest - Apply Today!!! by ~nemo-ramjet on deviantART

Seeing as a few artists have already come up with some gorgeous speculative dinosaur art in the wake of All Yesterdays, this could get very awesome, very quickly.

Links Of Interest!

First off, since I just came back from a crazy family trip and am heading into another crazy weekend with my cousin's wedding and Boston Comicon, here is the Art of The Day right up top. After drawing this, I dubbed myself the most creative person ever:



* - Art Evolved has been after another band of dirty stinkin' art thieves! I don't know if it's worse that the artists are being uncredited or that their art is being stolen for a website that is not funny in a way that is almost impressive.

* - I have to say, the events of Coachella were a hell of a thing to catch up on.

* - "The Legend of Korra", a sequel series to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" premiered recently!

* - There are thirty "Vault Movies" being released by Disney over the course of this year. /Film has the list and... boy are they random.

* - Speaking of random and Disney, I did not see a film based upon "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" coming. Also, I officially will not get excited about the return of Roger Rabbit until I am sitting in the theater waiting for the movie to begin.

* - Lines and Colors had a beautiful post on the work of Eyvind Earle.

* - And Living Lines Library just posted a treasure trove of Hayao Miyazaki film art.

* - The Orange Bird has made a comeback at Walt Disney World and Progress City is a little excited.

* - And Bill Plympton created a typically bizarre couch gag for a recent episode of "The Simpsons".

The Feather Gallery is up!

Go and look! Peter and Traumador did an amazing amount of work on this gallery and they say it's the biggest we've had so far! There are some absolutely gorgeous pieces in there; great work everyone!

Links of Interest - Family Reunion Recovery Edition!

So... the last two and a half week's worth of posts were, for the most part, written well in advance, if it isn't obvious. And I missed "Reign of the Dinosaur Revolution". This is all due to In Real Life drama.

Now as you may have noticed, I hate sharing personal stuff online. So I hope "family from Florida came to visit for a week and a half" and "every day was an Adventure largely centered around consuming as much lobster as possible" and "a pipe leading to the downstairs toilet decided to troll us all" is enough for everyone.
 
So instead of a review of "Dinosaur Revolution" (which won't be happening for a while as I may wait for the DVD because Lull Destruction in nature shows makes me cry), or one of the seemingly twenty trip reports I would like to write (and aside from the plumbing problems, we did indeed have a great time), I have for you Links of Interest!

* - Hey look, another person watching every Disney film there is! The Disney Film Project is both a blog and a podcast, which makes things a little bit different, and it doesn't look like Ryan is doing the films in any particular order. However, and this is the kicker, he's reviewing shorts (giving me a terrific nostalgia trip over favorite shorts I couldn't remember the titles of) and everything from "Song of the South" and "Make Mine Music!" to, er, "Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure" and "The Country Bears". Godspeed and good luck!

* - On another note, how about a blog dedicated to obscure prehistoric animals written by a seven-year-old kid? Next time you feel disillusioned with the youth of today, head on over to Life Before the Dinosaurs and breathe a little easier.
* - If you haven't been reading the Dinosaurs Reanimated Production Blog, you should start. Simple as that.
* - September is apparently Velociraptor Awareness Month. How is it possible that I was previously unaware of this?

* - Archosaur-themed wines? Well, yes. There are quite a few, technically speaking. That said, I need Apatosaurus Chardonnay in my wine label collection yesterday.

* - ColourLovers did a fantastic infographic on the use of color in comics.
* - Speaking of classic superheroes, check out this super-adorable "Up"/"Rocketeer" fan-film.

* - Junk Food Dinner dug up a trio of bizarre children's films for their 75'th episode and also, perhaps more importantly, brought my attention to the website "All Clues, No Solutions". Going over their catalog, it has occurred to me that my alter-ego has been on a very long hiatus hasn't she?

* - Meanwhile Oh Noa reviews the stupidest Halloween costumes currently available. Now I don't have to. (There is no universe in which that Sexy Big Bird costume is okay.)

* - The often hilarious, and oddly named, pop culture blog Wolf Gnards (as with Topless Robot, I promise it isn't what it sounds like) applied a little basic genetics to inexplicably popular sitcoms of the past and the results... my God, I will never see a "Full House" rerun in the same light.

* - Speaking of phrases that name-check God (even though we weren't): There have been a lot of interesting reactions to DC's giant reboot... thing. However, this one might be the weirdest.

* - Speaking of "Full House" (which we were), this is amazing. I want to be able to play this.

* - The Urban Pantheist had a fantastic post about the endangered species issue.

* - You have probably already heard of these shoes. And to them I say, big deal! They don't even really lace themselves and you are just stuck with a pair of really ugly (this coming from a not-a-shoe-person person) shoes. Where is my f***ing Hoverboard?!?

* - As I mentioned a few weeks ago, there doesn't seem to be much happening at Walt Disney World for the parks' 40'th Anniversary. This might be changing early next month. (Wanna bet the "special surprise" is a preview of the Fantasyland expansion? Ffft, yeah right.)

* - Speaking of WDW, OMGWTFLOL!!! (Just trust me when I say that there is a small crater where DisBoards once stood...)

* - Speaking of Disney, obviously a lot of ink and blood has been spilled over the most recent "Star Wars" revisions, but the revisions to Disney films often don't raise a peep. Some thoughts about this here.

* - And on the subject of revised Disney films, remember "The Sweatbox"? The documentary about the implosion of "Kingdom of the Sun" and last-minute bashing together of "The Emperor's New Groove"? Well a tiny little bit of it has been posted on YouTube, so go watch it while you can.

* - And the Audubon Society's blog shared these gorgeous photographs of feathers in amber.

Lots of Art Evolved-keteers getting shout-outs recently, which is awesome! They include:

* - Dave and Niroot's dinosaur fights from "Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs" being featured on io9.

* - A link to and discussion of a rather old "When Pigs Fly Returns" story on Science... Sort Of.

* - And speaking of "Science... Sort Of", hey look who's featured in their a-hundreth episode! Thanks guys, you rule!

-----

Art of the Day!

Hey, I finished the turtle painting!



It's a little different from when I started; I didn't like how the greenish-black turtles were fading into the greenish background. Now they're yellowish-puce.

Quickie: Art Evolved Speedpaintings!

Yesterday morning, Dave Maas invited the Art Evolved crew to a Speed Paint challenge, based on questions posed to the extremely useful (and oftentimes unintentionally amusing) website Ask a Biologist. For the unfamiliar, a Speed-Paint is a quick digital (or not) painting finished within a half-hour or less.

For this week's game, I chose this question, because who could resist? "Who would win, a harpy eagle or a grizzly bear?" With this question for the ages and the memory of an excellent satirical book that is more than a little tangentially related in mind, I spent twenty minutes on this:



I will confess I cheated a tiny bit: I just had to double-check on what a Harpy eagle looks like. Wound up mostly going from my memory anyway.

(NOTE: Simulposted at Art Evolved.)

Nobody Doesn't Like Therizinosaurs!

In which I describe the step-by-step* process by which I made a picture for the Therizinosaur Gallery, which will appear at the ART Evolved website in March.
* - You're going to get the song in your head anyway, you might as well listen to it now. :)
Step One: Where we can have lots of fun.
I can't show you the real Step One, coming up with an idea. I hit upon a concept that has to do with one of the reasons why Therizinosaurs are among my favorite animals: paleoartists had such a hard time trying to work out what these animals *were* -never mind what they looked like- throughout the years.
So I sketched out a drawing of a modern, accurate-as-far-as-we-know Therizinosaur (on the bottom here) looking in confused disgust at some earlier interpretations. Then I scanned it.

And here's the scan as it appeared when I opened it up in Photoshop.

Step Two: Where there's so much we can do!

I rotated the image and saved it. Now the "Therizinosaur" on the far left is based on an old shame in Gregory S. Paul's otherwise excellent book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World. He thought they were some kind of "predatory prosauropod", or even a mishmash of bones from random animals!
The guy in the middle is a happy character from the video game "Dino Crisis" (shows up at the 6.50 mark) - though I know I've seen this "look" before. Seems to be based on the assumption, "well golly, they got big gigantic claws, they MUST have eaten meat!" Of course.
Before inking the sketch, I got out my copy of Predatory Dinosaurs and looked for a drawing of an actual Therizinosaur skeleton online. Turns out the proportions were a little off - generally, these animals are more awkward than you think they are.

So I sketched out their longer necks in blue. (I love my Wacom tablet.) I'll use this as a guide in the next step.

Step Three: Where it's just you an' me-e-ee!!!

Here's the inking halfway finished. I do each figure on a different layer. That way, I can move them around and make sure they're all standing on the same "floor" when I'm done. I can also shift the two long-necks around so I can trace their original heads, then move them to where they should be according to the blue sketch.
Since I got my Mac, I've fallen in love with some of the stranger brushes in Photoshop CS4. Now I usually ink with a calligraphy pen brush. This keeps the drawing from looking "too neat".
Here's the inking all finished:


Step Four: Where I can give you more!

The "Predatory Prosauropod" is now in glorious extra-color. Note the gray background, which helps me not forget to paint in the white areas. This step usually takes the longest depending on what coloring method I use. (This time, I used a variation on the method detailed by illustrator Tony Cliff in this tutorial.) This is most often the step where I say, "Thank God for layers".

Step Five: Doncha know that the time has arrived!
And here is the final piece!

Is the "Dino Crisis" guy too gory? Nah.

More Offbeat and/or Obscure Christmas Animation

Well first off, I'm psyched to announce that two of my dinosaur sketches have been selected for the Art Evolved "Transitional Art Forms" gallery! I'm honored by this as I've been wanting to draw something specifically for their monthly galleries. (Unfortunately, while I do have a terrific idea for their upcoming Palaeo-Environment Gallery, it violates pretty much every stated rule for said gallery. Misplaced wildlife is a big no-no. Maybe I'll do it anyway just for fun...)
----
More animated Christmas specials that time has seemingly forgotten!

"A Claymation Christmas Celebration"
Consider this Will Vinton's victory lap. He was at the top of his game when he made this special. It's finally available on DVD after languishing in obscurity for years. Here's the "Joy to the World" sequence, just to give you a taste:


"The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus"
The ultimate Christmastime "THAT'S what it was called!!!" I have already reviewed it at The Realm, but here's the commercial. This is probably why so many 80's kids were... surprised by what the special actually involved.


"Banjo the Woodpile Cat" I nearly forgot about this and that would have made me a sad Dan Bluth fangirl. I believe this was his first solo venture ever and was originally intended to be a Christmas special. It was released on DVD a while back but sadly, isn't available on Netflix. Here's a little taste of that ol' early Bluth cuteness overload:


"Christmas In Tattertown"
Sadly, the Internet has largely forgotten this oddity. It is a Ralph Bakshi Christmas Special (sort of; it's actually a hastily edited failed pilot). It aired on Nickelodeon from 1988-1992 and featured a spider character who'd later show up in "Cool World". There's rumors of a DVD release, so hopefully I can verify that I didn't dream this.

"Father Christmas"
I've only recently learned about this charming animated short film from the creator of the less-obscure-in-America The Snowman. Ever wonder what Santa Claus does on the day after Christmas? Here's a cute commercial that gives you a taste of the tone:

Bonus: And speaking of "The Snowman"...