Monday 6 January 2014

Paleoart



I did mention in my previous post that I had been doing the paleoart - a popular unofficial term for the kind of illustration, sculpture and animation in which the extinct animals are reconstructed and/or restored. I must have drawn my first prehistoric animals when I was 5. Unfortunately, I haven't kept any of those early works.
My first inspiration most certainly came from the Karl Zeman's film "Cesta do praveku" (Journey to the Beginning of Time) (1954). Of course, the whole movie was inspired by the work of the great Czech illustrator and paleoartist ZDENĚK BURIAN (1905 - 1981) who was also involved in the film production.


I think the next inspiration was the fantastic Rudolph F. Zallinger’s The Age of Reptiles mural which is displayed at the full length of the east wall of the Yale Peabody Museum’s Great Hall.
Many years later, I have visited the Museum and saw the mural while staying at my friend and also a paleoartist Brian Franczak's home in Connecticut. It is funny that my old (1987) illustration of Torosaurus chasing a varanid Palaeosaniwa, who had stolen one of it's eggs, has been displayed at the Yale Peabody Museum for about a decade now.


Edmontosaurus with a fleshy rooster-like comb



Besides being a cartoonist I am also a paleoartist. I have been a paleoartist for decades. You can see some of my restorations at the Natural History Museum's in London site:
Natural History Museum London Picture Library
or at my old neglected tripod site:
Beri's Dinosaur World (BDW)
I am happy to note that although many of the life restorations of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals are decades old (the oldest dating from 1983), they still can pass as reasonably accurate ones or even don't have any major flaws regardless of the recent advances in paleontology and numerous new discoveries.
To cut the long story short, recently a new wonderful and very surprising Edmontosaurus fossil with some soft body parts impressions has been discovered and described. According to this find, not only the various dinosaurs had the bony combs, crests, horns and sails, but they might have been decorated with the fleshy ornaments as well. The Edmontosaurus had a fleshy rooster's comb.
National Geographic Society site has the story. Julius Csotonyi has produced a nice life restoration for the paper and the magazine.
However, looking at the published paper, I have noticed that the fleshy comb might have been larger and of a bit different shape than Julius has painted it. Here is my interpretation:




Wonder Woman




I did several illustrations of Wonder Woman. I think none of them was published in a magazine. Although, it is true, that I never even tried submitting them. It was fun drawing this super heroine:



My digital sci fi illustration

Here is one of my digital sci fi illustrations:






Dune cover

Here is my drawing for one of the Dune books cover. From mid 90's.




My very old comic strip

I have produced this comic strip in the early 70's. Unfortunately, all the originals were stolen.

The text is in Croatian.

Some sci fi hardware

Some of the most interesting land vehicles in sci fi are the walking machines. One might ask, why the regression? Why not hover or fly low?
Here are some examples, from War of the worlds with Martian tripods, through Dan Dare Rogue planet comic Phant walking tanks to Star Wars with Imperial AT-AT walkers.