Re: For the artists: RIP

[John Conway <john.a.conway@gmail.com>]

Colin McHenry wrote:

> 1. you need a huge team of artists to get everything right; a scupltor 
> to get the initial shape of the animal, then various 3d digital artists 
> to do the fine details, rendering, etc.  Then the thing has to be posed 
> / animated, and the background and lighting need to be worked out (plus 
> whatever other critters are in the scene with the main subject).  In 
> short, there are a lot of people in between the scientific information 
> at the start and the art director at the finish.  It is inevitable that 
> most of the people in that sequence will understand very little of the 
> basics about what they are dealing with (for the sea monsters, apart 
> from the basic anatomy, this means things such as; how animals move in 
> water, how light behaves in water, that sort of thing)  So there will 
> inevitably be lots of mistakes.
>
> One the other hand, when you (as a palaeontologist) are working directly 
> with one artist it's a lot easier to make sure that basic things that 
> are going to make it look realistic don't fall through the gaps.

Also, I might add, a single, consistent theory of biomechanics 
(hopefully); rather than a hodge-podge of committee compromises. One 
palaeontologist working with one artist can produce some pretty 
thought-provoking images. A herd of palaeontologists working with a 
flock of artists results in watered-down science and bland imagery.

> For example, one of the main problems with the animals in the NG spread 
> is that they are all swimming around with their mouths open.  While it's 
> ok (if a little repetative) to show a carnosaur showing off its dental 
> work, for a marine animal this is a no-no.  You open the jaws on 
> something like a pliosaur, and there's only going to be one result - the 
> animal's going to come to a pretty rapid halt (that big maw makes a 
> really effective water brake).   So 20 pages of close ups of various 
> marine reptiles swimming around with their mouths wide open is, apart 
> from being a tedious compositional cliche, just plain stupid.

Yeah but Col, they just look cooler with their mouths open. Geez, how 
else could you tell that they were terrifying bloodthirsty monsters???

> I reckon they'd if they'd used people like Dan and John (to pull a 
> couple of names out the air!) they'd have saved themselves a heap, got a 
> better result, and given a couple of palaeoartists a decent lifestyle 
> for a month or two....

Well, I was used (briefly) along with Jim Cunningham as a consultant on 
the _Pterodactylus_ in the cover image. The problem was that the 
turnaround time was slow, and there just wasn't time for more than a 
single revision.

> 2. For all the amazing resources they poured into this, I frankly (and 
> this is just a personal, subjective, I-don't-like-that-sort-of-art type 
> opinion) don't think the result looked that great.  For mine, the images 
> lack life - they are very flat.  Compare this with the depth that Dan 
> gets into his underwater stuff (yes, its ironic that the 2D techniques 
> and the 3D techniques have opposed results...).

It is curious that. 3D palaeoart has been surprisingly bland I think.


--

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am 
large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

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