Re: Paleontologist and artist

["Brett Booth" <brettbooth@worldnet.att.net>]

>From: "Chris Bennett" <cbennett@bridgeport.edu>

> 
> Tracy,
> 
> I can't speak for any others, but I can describe what happened in the case
> of my book,   Pterosaurs:  The Flying Reptiles, Franklin Watts, Inc.  Brain
> Franczak was contracted to illustrate the book and I was working closely
> with him.  I sent him info, he sent me drafts, I commented on the drafts,
> and he changed what I wanted changed.  I am very pleased with some of the
> illustrations that he did.  Then time was running out, Brian could not
> complete the work, and the publisher got two or three other people to
> provide the necessary figures to fill the book.  I think they simply got the
> basic desciption of the figure (e.g., flying Sordes) and went from there.  I
> never saw drafts and I was certainly surprised and dismayed when the book
> came out.  I certainly was not responsible for the flying Sordes that
> reminds me of a Ford Trimotor airplane with its distinctive corrugated wing
> skins, but I had no control over it.
>
> So, at least some paleontologists do care about the illustrations, and
> perhaps all do, but that does not necessarily mean that the publisher cares.
>
> Chris

Although I don't have any regular book experiance, I do have 9 years of
comic book publishing experiance and time is always the greatest factor.
Patintings take time, most people can't do a completed piece in a day or
two, even in comics, and additional artists are brought in. Then you have
the editors who know next to nothing about dinosaurs or whatever, and they
hire friends or cheap and reliable artists they've used before. It's not the
way things should be done but that's how they are done. It drives me insane
to see some of the stuff that's produced.

Best,

Brett
http://home.att.net/~brettbooth/Index.html