Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Triassic Park Page XIII


That's a wrap for this storyline! Makes me wonder how many Caviramus it would take to get a full-sized Therizinosaurus airborne in actuality. A worthy research topic for someone's graduate thesis, no doubt.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Triassic Park Page IX


This parodies the song "Chaos" from the entertaining fanmade Jurassic Park Musical.

Likely didn't expect a TetZoo Time character revelation on Raptormaniacs, did you? King Preter thinks that "ephemeral" means "difficult to see". (TetZoo Time exists as a comic in the Raptormaniacs universe; it's not that contrived.)

CAMP stands for Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, a giant volcanic region associated with the breakup of Pangaea and the end-Triassic extinction. Signor-Lipps effect describes the phenomenon that the fossil record is generally not complete enough for us to ascertain to full temporal range of a taxon, which, among other things, can make mass extinction events appear more gradual than they really were.

I have tried something new for this one: a recorded demo of the song parody. There is no musical accompaniment, but I hope it is helpful to readers who are unfamiliar with the song and/or cannot get the lyrics to fit. It's only me singing in my own voice and should not be taken to indicate the canon voices of my characters. I do not usually pronounce "Ostrom" the way I do in the song; I appear to have subconsciously changed it to something I found easier to sing.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Triassic Park Page VIII



I considered having a second encounter with the Saurosuchus after Ebeff and May's arrival to better mirror the events of the film, resulting in Ebeff subduing the Saurosuchus by trapping its head under his foot. It didn't make the cut in the end.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Triassic Park Page VI


Happy to be done with this page. Drawing that jeep was a nightmare, despite it being very cartoonish.

Dicynodont latrines are real, if anyone is wondering.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Triassic Park Page V


The "tail blade" mention is a reference to Tricia Arnold's reaction towards the fictional dinosaurs made up for Terra Nova.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Triassic Park Page IV


Remember that guy? He won't be appearing again in this story; he's only here to kickstart the rest of the plot. Perhaps we will learn more about him some other time.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Triassic Park Page III


As most if not all paleoartists can attest, researching paleobotany for artwork typically sucks. You can see here that I didn't even try. However, on a more serious note, I recommend the "Botany for Paleoartists" series by Maija Karala at her blog Humming Dinosaurs and Nature's Other Small Wonders for all your paleobotanical needs and the in-development Hell Creek simulator game Saurian sets a great example in doing things right.

In my original plans for this story, I had a scene where Ostrom showed the others a nursery where the Triassic animals were being reared from eggs. Savape would eat one of the hatchlings and declare, "Death finds a way." I ended up scrapping it because Triassic Park has a fundamentally different setting from Jurassic Park (a museum as opposed to a biological preserve).

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Triassic Park Page II


Sinornithoides, the forgotten sleeping dinosaur. Despite having a head start in its date of discovery, it's hard to beat Mei, whose two described specimens are both preserved in sleeping posture. Here we have our guest star party member for the story, who I created in part because I needed another role in order to parody the source material better. Why "May"? It was primarily for the pun on Mei, but it's also my birth month.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Triassic Park Page I

Add Lasers to Paleoart


Got sidetracked by a Twitter paleoart meme. Skull wishes he could do this. We'll return to our scheduled programming shortly.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Coming Soon: Triassic Park


The rest of this story arc will not be in color, but it wouldn't have been a Jurassic Park parody without the signature colors. This year being the release of Jurassic World, I feel it's time to unveil this storyline next. As I came up with the main structure of the narrative years back, however, the story will primarily reference the first Jurassic Park, not Jurassic World.

This arc was initially meant to kick off with an opening song, set to the tune of the Jurassic Park theme, mainly an excuse for me to draw some strange Triassic critters that wouldn't actually feature in the plot itself. My recently finished chart of vertebrate evolution has given me my fill of Triassic beasts though, so we'll dive right into the actual story in the next post.

The Saurosuchus skeleton was referenced from Benton's 1984 article "Rauisuchians and the success of dinosaurs".