Not crazy about it myself.
I wonder if there is a financial component to the decision though. They end up having a 3D model they can repurpose for anything from toys to Discovery Channel leasing.
On Dec 16, 2005, at 7:32 PM, John Conway wrote:
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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