One of my favorite little doodles is a raptor guy I made up after I had a nightmare (well anxiety dream, not so much a nightmare) about being stranded in the desert outside Las Vegas and being chased by raptors. In my dream they were extinct everywhere except right outside Las Vegas and when I woke up I wasn't sure if they still existed or not. It was a unsettling at the time. Anyway, this guy is the result.
Try as I might, for some reason I'm having formatting issues with him and his colors will not come out right. But this is the basic guy. Body of a turkey, hooked claw, lots of fangs. Adorable mostly. Here's his film debut...This piece was my first experiment with soudn effects in my intro to 2D animation class. I like the stick figure version of this guy. So, everything was great. All was well with the world. Until I saw this episode of Nova. The episode surrounds the discovery of the four winged dinosaur.
Now the awesome thing about this guy is he pretty much proves (though there are still doubters, see the episode) that birds descended from dinosaurs. The awesome(est) thing about this is that it indicates that dinosaurs, at least of the carnivorous two legged variety, had feathers. Which is really cool. The downside is that it means every portrayal of raptors in the media from Jurassic Park on down to my little guy, is wrong. They should have feathers. Which means I need to do a total character redesign. Well, not total. The shape is the same, but instead of buttery leather skin or rough scales, he needs downy mostly useless chicken feathers.
So now I am toying with ways to convey this killer flamingo but still retain a little of that reptilian dignity. It's pretty hard.
But I'm working on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment