Lang's and Debra's Indian Tomb

There are two exciting movies directed by Fritz Lang that I loved as a kid. The first was the "Indian Tomb" or "Journey to the Lost City" (Das indische Grabmal). It was a 1959 German-French-Italian adventure drama film directed by Fritz Lang. The other is "The Tiger of Eschnapur" (Der Tiger von Eschnapur). Besides being exotic and thrilling, the top spot in the films was the marvelous dance performed by petite Debra Paget, of course. The lousy made fake cobra she has been dancing with in "Indian tomb" was sufficiently believable for the undemanding audience of the time, which was mesmerised by Debra's bold outfit and dancing moves, anyway.

 

 

Here Fritz Lang discusses the scene with Debra Paget.

Forbidden planet's Monster from the ID

  I keep watching Forbidden planet movie from time to time. It was so good, so ahead of its time in so many ways: from the music score to the design. One of my favourite scenes is when the captain and the doctor were speculating about the shape of the monster, deducting from cast of its footprint. It is quite similar to the real task when paleontologists are trying to figure out the characteristics and features of extinct animals who left only their petrified tracks in the rock. I search for the ancient tracks on the Adriatic coast and it is a lot of research and fun.

It is also amusing that some species of dinosaurs had claws, not unlike the one from the movie, but on their three-fingered hands. Check out the cast of the finger claw of the allosaurid theropod  Saurophaganax here :
 Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

My drawings of the fossil bones of some theropod hands. Above is Megaraptor left hand (manus) and below is Allosaurus left hand:

Please, note that in life, the claw would be covered with a keratinous sheath - talon (like our nails) which would make it considerably longer.

The second part of this article continues on my Mesozoic Mosaic blog:

Forbidden planet's Monster from the ID part 2

My old Tarzan cartoon

In the mid 70's I tried to publish my cartoons and managed selling them to the national TV network TV Zagreb which featured them once a week in the popular show "Sunday afternoons" (Nedjeljom popodne).
The cartoons were lost. Obviously somebody acquired them without my consent and remuneration.
Thus I have only the unpublished cartoon panels from that time. This Tarzan cartoon wasn't published:

Underrated westerns

I have a feeling that one particular western is not appreciated enough. I am referring to Marlon Brando's One-Eyed-Jacks (1961) with  Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and Katy Jurado. Although, it won the first prise at the San Sebastian film festival, it was still soon forgotten.  Running from the law after a bank robbery in Mexico, Dad Longworth (Malden) finds an opportunity to take the stolen gold and leave his partner Rio (Brando) to be captured. Years later, Rio escapes from the prison where he has been since, and hunts down Dad for revenge. Dad is now a respectable sheriff in California, and has been living in fear of Rio's return. Malden plays an unforgettable villain.
 The western is quite different from all the others filmed at the time. In the best sence.
 It is interesting noting that (as usually) the (painted) posters for the foreign markets are much better than the ones printed for the American one. I suspect they were ppainted by the local artists. The top one was for ex Yugoslavia (distribution: Croatia film), and the bottom one is for the Italy. I prefer the top one.

 

Ray Harryhausen

Stop-motion animation master Ray Harryhausen had died at the age of 92 (1920 – 2013). I am tempted to call all the movies in which he was involved  Harryhausen's movies. Because, I am afraid, that without his skills and imagination those movies wouldn't be remembered at all.

My favourite was "The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad" (1958) and Ray's giant horned cyclops. I was so terrified by those monsters as a kid, that I wanted to watch the movie over and over again. Maybe only one monster was even cooler and more sinister: the invisible monster from Id featured in the "Forbidden planet" movie.

Super heroine

A couple of my old sketches.
Wonder Woman again. This time wearing a new Summer time outfit of my design.
 Supergirl being under attack by pteranodons.

Some of my book cover illustrations

Here are some of my book cover illustrations. Some are also my design. From top to bottom:
Tyrannosaurus rex vs. Triceratops horridus - Vijesti Hrvatskog geološkog društva ( Croatian geological survey's news magazine)
A pliosaur Liopleurodon on the cover of my book that hasn't been realised (yet), but the illustration was published in a National Geographic magazine.
"Power bites", a dinosaur poster published in 1993 by Scholastic.
"The Pirates": a self-promotional experimental cover.

 

 

 

 

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.