Everything's better with a T. rex in it

 

Well, here I am. Trying to give my wimpy drawings some kind of purpose through a lame blog. I think I have been drawing all kinds of animals, creatures and characters all my life. Most often for no other reason than my own enjoyment. At some point I wanted to become a comic-book artist, being a lifelong Marvel fan as I was (although I have always very much enjoyed a lot of material by many other publishers, so please don’t freak out yet, you DC zealots), but when I eventually tried to tell a story through panels on a page I found out I would probably get bored fast. And I hated drawing buildings, vehicles and urban environments with a passion. So I’m really sorry Spidey, but being your dad was not an option for me.

Comics aside, I also have a tendency to obsess about everything dinosaur-related since I was seven, and dinosaurs have always made a huge part of my creative output. Jurassic Park, both in book and movie form, was a huge deal for me back in 1993. I was 13 then, so you all probably understand why. Plus, the animals looked great on the big screen and the special effects hold up pretty well to this day. It was sad to see the dinosaurs looking so bad in the comic-book adaptation of the film drawn by the great Gil Kane though. I expected a better job from such an artistic Titan. But I digress… as I very often tend to do.

In 2006, seeing that all the books about dinosaurs I could find in Spain were either terribly outdated (the so-called Normanpedia from 1985 was still widely available) or just plain terrible , I decided to try my hand at both writing and illustrating a book myself to make my little contribution to the spread of science education and get my paleoartist fix at the same time. I managed to finish the whole text and most of the drawings before getting a deal with a Spanish publisher. They even sent me a contract to sign. And then… the 2008 crisis hit and suddenly publishing a thick, full-color and somewhat expensive book on a nerdy subject was not a sensible business decision for publishers anymore, and the whole deal fell through. That sucked. I could try again to get it published, but time and new discoveries have rendered it terribly outdated, and I would need to rewrite and redraw pretty much all of it.

There’s a positive to that story though. As I finished the drawings for the book, I posted them on DeviantArt for other fellow artists to enjoy and review. And both things they did, encouraging me with their kind words and pointing out inaccuracies and ways to improve my work. It certainly was a wonderful place back then for artists to follow and interact with each other. It’s a pity that artist haven doesn’t exist anymore. I mean, DeviantArt does still exist and I still post there, but it’s definitely NOT the same place. And it’s flooded with AI-generated “art” now, which doesn’t help to improve things one bit.

And then, not very long after that… I just stopped drawing. For years. I played and doodled around occasionally, and even updated a couple of my dinosaur pieces one summer that I was particularly bored. But that’s it. I pretty much surrendered to the idea of having a full-time job with no relation to art and creativity whatsoever, raising my kids, enjoying my family and just trying to live as quiet as possible a life my work in the Courts of Justice would allow me to have. Until something clicked inside my head in late 2022. Suddenly I wanted to start drawing again, and so I did. I wanted to improve my limited and rusty skills. I wanted to be creative again. I wanted to feel I had a purpose. And I wanted to get something else out of it, maybe some money for a change. Some tangible reward besides feeling good about my art. I would finally accomplish something.

Since then, I’ve been rejected or ignored by all 40 (yes, exactly 40) illustration agencies from around the world to which I sent art samples or the link to my portfolio. Talk about consistency. I assume I am not what publishers are currently looking for. I got the message, thank you very much.

I have also very recently opened online stores on several print-on-demand sites like Redbubble, Teepublic and Zazzle, and even modified some of my pieces to make them look better on T-shirts, tote bags, phone cases and the like. But it’s a long way until your designs get noticed by people amid such a huge sea of creativity. Making your first sale is always difficult, and that is what seems to get the ball rolling and makes the algorithm start showing your designs on people’s search results. No luck so far, but since keeping such online stores implies zero cost on my side, well, there they are in case someone is eventually interested.

And well, here I am, just as I said on my first sentence here. Showing you a pair of outdated and malicious-looking Tyrannosaurus rex that I drew years ago for my book and modified recently to make them a more attractive design for printing on apparel. I must confess that I still quite like this piece though. It’s rather reptilian for what it is considered scientifically accurate nowadays, but as a fantasy creature I think it’s fine. I mean, the guy being followed by the Rex wouldn’t even be there if I were trying to be realistic in any way. I put him there for the sake of size comparison, and even at that I failed, as the dinosaur probably looks a tad too big for what is known from its remains. A paleontologist I am certainly not.

All my dinosaur drawings for the book are rectangular in shape and have a black border around them. At the time I thought it would make the pages easier to design and make it look somewhat like a comic-book. That is what I chose that clear line style in the first place. But when the time came to upload them to print-on-demand sites, I thought some changes should be made to turn them into acceptable designs to wear on a t-shirt, dress or hoodie. In this case, I chose to make the closest animal look like it had found the time tunnel through which the human got to the Late Cretaceous of North America, and was starting to cross it. Silly as it may be. 

Updated design for Print-On-demand sites.

 

About the creature itself… what else can I say about T. rex that hasn’t been said already? It’s probably the most famous extinct animal ever. The dinosaur with (by far) the most presence in pop culture. Many children’s favorite dinosaur of them all. The biggest and most vicious predator of all time, et cetera. It even becomes the ultimate hero of the Jurassic Park film by saving Grant and the kids from the Raptors in one of cinema’s silliest moments (and yet it somehow worked!). Rexy’s name universally evokes images of a big, mean and majestic creature. The perfect toy, monster, prehistoric animal and hero for kids, all in one epic and scary package.

And yet, as good as Jurassic Park was to popularize a more modern and accurate image of dinosaurs as active, smart, bird-like creatures, far removed from the tail-dragging, lazy, stupid and cold-blooded giant lizards from previous decades, it also spread a lot of misinformation about old Rexy and its peers. The most infamous being Alan Grant’s certainty in advance that T. rex’s vision was based on movement. There is absolutely no reason to think that was the case, and in fact all available evidence points to quite the opposite. Tyrannosaurus and its closest relatives all had binocular vision, just like cats, wolves and us humans. Its eyes pointed forwards instead of to the sides, and while this reduces an animal’s field of view, it also gives it better depth perception, allowing the brain to construct a single three-dimensional image of its surroundings. A very useful trait for a predator to have. So yes, T. rex most certainly had very good eyesight, and there’s no way an actual paleontologist (like Grant is supposed to be) would ever assume otherwise. If I remember correctly, in the book many other dinosaurs in the park had movement-based vision, not only T. rex, and it was explained as an unexpected consequence of using frog DNA to complete their fragmented genomes. In the movie though, it’s just a very convenient plot device to avoid either a massacre (with the movie ending abruptly and far too early), or the animal just ignoring the tiny humans and going for bigger prey making good use of its newfound freedom, which is probably what a predator of that size would do. None of which, of course, makes for a scene half as good as what we got.

In that same vein, there’s no way T. rex would make the earth shake with every footstep. It was a big creature for sure, and very heavily built… and yet, it was probably a little lighter than a modern African elephant. Again, a very convenient plot device to show those two cups of water on the jeep’s dashboard forming waves with every step of the monster approaching at a stupidly slow pace. Which reminds me that the ground forgets to shake in the aforementioned scene later on, where the Rex suddenly appears to save our heroes from the Raptors. It must be the frog DNA again… or maybe ninja training. Whatever it is, it also allows such an earth-shaking behemoth to run fast enough to chase a jeep with ease. Something the real Rex would never be able to do without breaking its legs and collapsing while trying. They went a bit too far with its capabilities as a predator there.

But, as it has been said many times and with every new entry in the franchise, it’s just a movie, not a documentary. It has to be fun and scary and entertaining. And it certainly accomplishes all of that (the first film does at least, while the rest… well, I might save my opinion for a future post). And after all, those animals are genetically engineered creatures, not real dinosaurs, right? That is often their excuse for not showing us any feathered dinosaurs too.

Accuracy is not that important when enjoying any work of fiction. There has always been a strong case favoring suspension of disbelief. It’s not that the Indiana Jones franchise is an accurate depiction of what an actual archaeologist from the first half of the 20^th century could go through in their job, just like the James Bond movies are anything but a realistic portrayal of the British Secret Service. And I’m pretty sure there is no way you can travel through time using a DeLorean (not even with a flux capacitor in it). Yet (most of) those movies are effing great. Because they manage to make you a part of the adventure and forget about everything except enjoying the ride while it lasts. Sure, you can criticize this and that aspect of the story once it’s over, but you must admit to yourself that you enjoyed it all the way through. Warts and all. And that’s what any form of entertainment is for, if you ask me.

And with that in mind, my first conclusion is that overall Jurassic Park did T. rex and dinosaurs in general a huge favor in modernizing their image in the public’s mind, even with all its silliness and factual errors. My second conclusion is that this rant has already gone on for way too long for a first post. Therefore, I’ll stop it right here. Take care and see you all very soon.