Comic: "The Jurassic Period"
 

Background:
The Late Jurassic is a really bad time to be a small dinosaur. Unfortunately it's a job someone has to fill.
That job went to Zena the Compsognathus longipes. She drew the short straw in size, and on top of being on the lowest point of the food chain, she's alone; one of the few members of her species who travels alone (they're usually social creatures). She hates it and looks for companionship whenever it presents itself.
"Companionship" came in the form of Navado, an 80-foot long Diplodocus longus who travels in an expansive herd (even with creatures like Stegosaurs and Camptosaurs tagging along). Now, when you're eighty feet long, you never get messed with. Never.
Someone should've told poor Earl the Allosaur that.

So, before I tell you too much (which I already have), I'm gonna let you read for yourself as the story develops. Now go back and enter the brave new world of...
...The Jurassic Period.

Comics:
1-3. Zena tries to catch her next meal, but irony has a funny way of popping up when you least expect it.
The Jurassic Perioid-1
The Jurassic Period-2
The Jurassic Period-3

4-5. The standoff between the apex predator and the apex...salad eater ensues. Who will win? Can't you just smell the suspense? (Hm. Smells like boiled broccoli.)
The Jurassic Period-4
The Jurassic Period-5

6-coming soon. Zena meets the face of her knight in bumpy, scaly and orange armor. But is Navado willing to play nice with the little damsel?
The Jurassic Period-6


Some images of the cast:
Zena in color: (drawn/inked by me, colored by Paleoartist Natalie Grewe, a friend of mine)
(attachment #1)

Navado, Zena and Chet (a Stegosaurus stenops, Navvies old buddy from his childhood) wondering at astronamy. (Lion King joke)
(#2)

The first (seriously, the very first) image I drew of them two dinos together.
Look at Navado sneer... heheh.
(#3)

Why do their heads look like skulls?
The comic is quite good. Continue it!
What's it like to have fans of one thing on two different forums?
I was reading your message that came with the last strip, the one about what Navado should be. He reminds me very much of a Brachiosaurus. The neck is too bendy for an appatosaurus

Look at any paleoartist's work and you'll see that it's how everyone draws them.

Thank you! :fuzsmile:

I already noted that he is a Diplodocus Longus.
Brachiosaurs are of a different group of Sauropods, and he's just not similar to an Apatosaurus.
Brachiosaurus couldn't bend it's neck down low enough to fit Navado. So I'm stickin' with Diplodocus.
He's just a beefy one.

I suppose so. I'm not sure I've actualy seen what a diplodicus is, though I've heard of it.
Um... that's it, I suppose.

Very very much coolness happnin' with this comic, Dipstikk. The facial expressions, the way their body parts just fit together, the dialogue... ok, I actually don't like the dialogue so much, but other than that everything is perfect! Keep on making that comic!

WOW!
Like it!
Love it!
WANT MORE!

Ahahaha.
I think he's excited, folks.
I'm woikin' on the 7th strip as I type, and it's very difficult to manipulate a pencil.

Looks good.

Very intricate, but it could use a bit more contrast and/or shading. Still though, 'tis very good stuff.

Whee! Comic artists unite!

- Well, not to be 'snicketty, but it's a bit much to say everyone does - some of the best paleoart I've seen gives them a birdlike cast to the features - pebbly skin etc, with bristly little feathers, but skull-like, per se... I mean, they need some musculature on them to work the jaws etc. ;)

It's nice, though. I never have the patience to draw backgrounds so I'm not good at comics... :P

I have attached a diagram of a Velociraptor Mongoliensis's skull, along with speculative muscle structure. It's not like those fat-faced T-rex illustrations in Charles R. Knight's paintings from the 1880's.

It's....
BETTER.

The majority of muscle structure is in the jaw and around the orbits, since the bones of the skull were thick and strong and the orbits were weak.
(BEAT THAT I SAY!)

(BTW, do we have anyone on the forums who's good with dinosaurs?

Ummm... good with dinosaurs? Like how? If you mean does anyone know stuff about dinosaurs, then I might be of some help. I probably know less about them now than when I was a little kid (little kids always know lots about dinosaurs), but I think I still know a fair amount. Plus, I still have several good books on dinosaurs, and I watch the Science Channel and Discovery Kids a lot. And I can guarantee that I know more about dinosaurs than Calvin's mom... heh heh heh. So, if that's what you mean, I can probably help you a bit.

I've gotta say, Dipstikk, you're really good at conveying emotions on the dinosaur faces. It must be really tough to do that with freaking dinosaurs.

It is, especially with the carnivorous ones. No dinosaur had the facial muscles or skull structure to smile or anything, but it's especially hard with the carnivores since it's so hard to mess with their facial structure. (They have a definate face that you HAVE to follow up on when drawing, so smiling is hard to portray.)

Tell me if I'm making any sense at all. :fuzwink:

Once you can catch a fly with one hand...
Once you can name the most states while gargling milk...
Once you can...um...KILL a man...
THEN and ONLY then will you be an accomplished Paleoartist like I might be. :lol:

- hence why so many people seem to give them a birdish look - Kyoht (an artist whose work I look up to) does a lot of paleoart (and has a tutorial here) and tends towards the "birdish" theme. I'm not arguing that you're doing them wrong, and that they'd all have chubby humanlike cheeks (because that'd be silly. ;)), just that saying they "all" do them with a skull-like look to the head is a bit off. ;) It's the same with feathers - a lot agree that the dromaeosaurs most likely had insulatory feathers on at least SOME of their bodies to support an active lifestyle, but then a lot just disagree and make them naked. :P

Edit: As a sidenote, does anyone have any good diagrams of bird eye anatomy? I've got fed up of browsing the web for it and not finding it... :P

Edit2: Grr, stupid codes. *corrects it*

Ok, you're looking for someone who can draw dinosaurs, Dipstikk. You coulda just said that in the first place and saved a lotta confusion. I can't draw worth crap. And I should know-- I'm a qualified crap appraiser. Just bring in your crap and I can tell you how high a quality it is. Or, if you want to sell an item, I can give you a good estimate of how much crap it is worth. My shop is on the corner of Dung and Feces in Crapton, in the province of Crap, in Craponia.

A bit of info about muscles: A single muscle can only contract, not strech. It requires a group of muscles to be able to reuse one. intresting, isn't it?
Knowing that, look again at the jaw muscles. The mouth open, we can be quite sure hat those muscle strings are for closing the jaw. There are lots. But can you see any for opening them again? No? I didn't think so. There must be some that we can't see, but what I'm stressing is that the jaw opening muscles are weaker than jaw closing muscles.
A good example of these are crocodiles (Not aligators - I'm talking about the Steve Irwin bemoths that inhabit australia). Those jaws can snap bones in one crunch, but if you sit on them you won't be dinner for a crockodile, because of it's relatively weak jaw opening muscles.
I'm rambling again. Just some usefull info if you ever get attacked by a crokodile.