Glimpse of the state of things: very cool use of current tech to communicate Dinosaurs at the Royal Ontario. Models by Vlad Konstantinov and textures by  Andrey Atuchin, based on sketches by Julius Csotonyi. Dream team.

Struggling with mild burnout and simultaneously prepping some concept documents, for which I needed a Stegosaurus mount. Ended up inefficiently browsing and enjoying endless photos of Heinrich’s guided tour of the fantastic Aathal museum. Here’s my justification for about an hour of non-work.

Statistically, there’s no better way to attract visitors to one’s blog than titling something with the word “porn”, as my previous post about Katrina’s beautiful drawings showed – that got clicks. Now she’s back with news of the book, and it looks gorgeous. It’s called The Unfeathered Bird, published by Princeton University Press and chock-full of beautiful artwork – 300 of them! Browse the prints that she’s put up for sale to get a taste.

If you ask me if there is any discovery that has changed the way we live? It is quantum mechanics. And I make this point because … today people say “Why are we spending money up there? We got problems down here!” People don’t connect the time delay between scientific research and how you’re going to live your life later on down the line. All they want is a quarterly report and and a product that comes out of it. That is so short-sighted that that’s the beginning of the end of your culture.

I’m still recovering from Projekt Senckenberg – it was a vibrant 2 days full of very inspirational discussion and encounters. I will be digesting my experiences there in future posts, but unfortunately this will have to wait a week until I’m back from a business trip.

If you’d like an impression of the conference, they’ve just integrated a video into their site.

As you may know, palaeoart literally means “ancient art”, and many illustrators favor palaeontography (“the representation of things ancient”). Well, today I point to an article discussing true palaeoart, and even palaeoanimation (click the image above to go to the Discovery article). If the zootrope devices they mention really are zootropes (the article uses the less familiar word thaumatropes) then that really would be animation… otherwise the temporal superimpositions remind me more of futurist paintings. Here a painting by Giacomo Balla, fairly representative of the futurist’s fascination with movement minus the machinery. Go have a read… fascinating!

Back in the film days before digital tools we were more connected to the process … the more digital tools became prevalent, studios became more compartmentalized. I always tried to stay in touch with my work.

SO important! Seems very obvious yet this is the most influential element of artistic workflows… they allow hands-on manipulation of the big picture.

Fantastic, fun presentation and beautiful concept. I’m blown away at the way kickstarter and co are changing the landscape of financing and distribution, turning grass-roots momentum into a business.

JerseyBoy launches into the false marketing of scientific plausibility at the NJ Dino Park. Good graphic summaries of what’s wrong, and what’s right, and why it matters. Go Christopher!