#wwd2020

Stegosaurus stenops WIP

Let it be known that I am still working on WWD2020! It’s a series that I love putting out there and I’m so glad for all the positive reception that they’ve gotten over the last couple years! However, the posts are pretty mentally high effort to write and the illustrations are consistently high detail, hence why it’s often so long between posts. I can’t promise a faster schedule in the future but I can say that they are very much still in the works!

As a little teaser piece, here’s the version I’m working on for the redesign of Stegosaurus stenops! I have decided that I am bored with profile views, so I’ll publish the next few reconstructions that I’ve already finished and then it’s all 3D from here on out babeyyy! It’s something that I find more exciting and more artistically challenging and enjoyable, which I hope will help motivate me in completing the rest of this series.

WWD2020: Diplodocus carnegii

Welcome back to WWD2020 everyone, now taking place in the non-2020 year of 2021! I’ve made an executive decision to stick with 2020 for the sake of consistency, but let’s just consider this as like, a modern perspective on Walking With Dinosaurs from 2020 onwards or something like that shall we?

In other news, welcome all to the Jurassic for Episode 2: Time of the Titans! Everyone go listen to the main episode theme, it fills me with Emotions.

General:

And we’re off to an excellent start with the star of this episode, Diplodocus! The species isn’t clear in the episode itself, but since D. carnegii is the most common and best-known species it seems like a safe bet.

Diplodocus gets a lot of speculative treatment in this episode, with mating rituals, feeding habits, herding, and reproductive strategies that aren’t really confirmable from the fossil record. So, is it possible that Diplodocus laid its eggs through a long flesh-tube like a turtle? Sure! Is there any way to tell from the fossil record? Absolutely not.

Anatomy:

Probably the most notable change in the Diplodocus from 1999 to now is the posture of the neck, which kinda changes the entire Look of the animal. The sauropod neck posture in the 90s was very much “the neck must never be higher than exactly parallel with the ground”, based on the supposed flexibility of the neck

These days, however, sauropod posture has been kinda reconfigured, and they now get strong, upward-sloping necks supported by an also-sloping back. I foolishly didn’t draw this Diplodocus in a way the really showed it off, so here’s a lovely sketch by Gabriel Ugueto which really captures the upright, elegant posture:

The only real anatomical gripe I have is with the feet. They put toe claws on the front foot!! All sauropods, except for the very oldest species, had clawless front feet, except for one long inner claw that many later species also lost. This mistake happens all the time, those poor sauropods getting elephant-looking front feet when their actual anatomy was way weirder and cooler!

Skin/Colouration:

Overall, the team did super well on the outside appearance of the Diplodocus! The brown colours look plain at first, but the closer you look the more complex it actually gets, which is really cool and naturalistic! And it’s also a bit of a nightmare to draw, yayy!

Those iconic spines on the back are also very 90s Dinosaur Aesthetic, but these ones are actually supported by fossil evidence! Not from Diplodocus itself, but a related, unnamed species with skin impressions that show spines along the middle of the tail. The bony nodules the WWD Diplodocus has on its sides are also based on these skin impressions.

WWD2020: Ornitholestes hermanni

It’s WWD2020 time again! Continuing on with Episode 2: Time of the Titans, here’s one that’s been a long-time favourite of mine ever since I first saw Walking With Dinosaurs, Ornitholestes hermanni!

General:

Ornitholestes has had a very long history as a fossil, and has gone through a lot of different looks over the years. The WWD incarnation with bristly quills and a nose horn is peak 90s for Ornitholestes, and is actually based very closely on Greg Paul’s 1988 illustration:

When WWD was made, Ornitholestes was considered a coelurosaur, which basically in this context means it was a Generic Small Theropod. Recently though it’s been placed as a possible basal member of maniraptora, the group including dromaeosaurs, birds, and many other weird theropods. As such, I’ve given it wings and a slightly-raised second toe, the beginnings of a sickle claw.

I also really enjoy the behaviours that the WWD Ornitholestes shows during the episode! One of my favourites is that while standing around, they’ll sometimes itch their leg or side with their hands, and I decided to keep that in the redesign cause I just think it’s cute.

Scritch scritch!

Anatomy:

So, how about that nose crest huh? Personally I find it one of the most iconic WWD designs, but turns out the crest was never there in the first place. The only skeleton of Ornitholestes has a badly smushed skull, and our friend Grag Paul thoughy one of the sticky-uppy bits of bone supported a crest in life. Turns out though, that sticky-uppy bit of bone was like that because it was broken out of place, and the real Ornitholestes had a rather average-looking nose.

One weird thing about the WWD Ornitholestes that doesn’t make sense is how big and chunky the head is. Ever since its discovery Ornitholestes has been known to have a pretty small head and long neck, then WWD slaps a big ol 80s carnosaur head on instead? Weird

Skin/Colouration:

Featherssss!!! Well, “””quills””” technically but it’s something!! By 1999 feathered dinosaurs were a scientific fact, but the limitations of CGI at the time meant that a lot of the dinosaurs that should have been feathered were not. I’ve significantly enfloofened my redesign with wings and a full coat, but I did try to keep the little mohawk it’s got going on!

I’m also very fond of the colours on this one, they’re complex and interesting and feel very naturalistic, the brown and greys contrast really well with the bright splash of blue! What I didn’t expect though was that putting that colour pattern onto a fully fluffy Ornitholestes made it look kinda like a roadrunner. I wonder if that was one of the original inspirations?

WWD2020: Placerias hesternus

Heyyy who remembers WWD2020? Y’know, that thing I started doing this year then suddenly stopped doing and now we’re almost finished with 2020 and I haven’t finished the first episode? Yeah that. I did disappear for several months cause of tech troubles, not being able to access tumblr and just plain ol writer’s block but now I’m back on the horse and ready to go babey!!

So anyways, here’s the second-to-last species from Episode 1: New Blood!

General:

Placerias was a huge tusked herbivore and one of the last of the large non-mammalian synapsids. Now, WWD does a thing that’s since fallen out of practice by calling them “mammal-like reptiles”, which is a term some of y’all may be more familiar with. The thing about that though is that Placerias and its relatives were not reptiles. Like, not at all.

Synapsids, the group that includes modern mammals and also Placerias and the more famous Dimetrodon, was a group that branched off from the earliest land vertebrates more than 300 million years ago. Reptiles branched off at about the same time but from a different ancestor, so “mammal-like reptile”.... basically means nothing. These days we use the rather clunky “non-mammalian synapsid”, but we also use “stem-mammal” which is a lot nicer!

Anatomy:

So, these stem-mammals have quite different anatomy to things like dinosaurs, and I will admit that I am nowhere near an expert on them! But from what I can tell, the WWD Placerias gets it pretty right! My main critique is that they’re a little more upright than what they should be? Real life Placerias were a little more,,,, sausagey. Long fat body, short stumpy legs, that kinda deal.

I’m gonna sound like a broken record on this eventually but I think this is the first time it’s come up properly? But the Placerias in WWD are very skinny. This is one where I’m like, kinda ok with it in the show because in the context of the episode, these animals are living through a drought. However, I’d doubt that a healthy living Placerias would’ve been showing so much rib. Again….. sausagey.

The feet though, are actually really good!! This is the kind of animal where a lot of people would probably just slap some elephant feet on and call it a day, but clearly the WWD team put in the work and gave it flatter, individually-separated toes! I always love to highlight good points like this because WWD is really good dammit and it’s great to see moments where they really nail the anatomy.

Look at those flat feet! Love that for them.

Skin/Colouration:

Again… more good stuff!! Mammalian-type skin, which Placerias probably had, isn’t great at producing a wide range of colours, so the drab greyish-yellowish colour is totally plausible (if not particularly pleasant to look at)! One thing that I would like to see though, is hair. Hair in some form has existed since the Permian, and I think it makes sense for something a mammalian as Placerias so have at least a little fuzz, as a treat. WWD’s Placerias is stark naked, but I’ve given mine some patches of scruffy hair. 

One other cool thing that’s missing though is that the family group Placerias belongs to, the uh… stahleckeriidae, had some pretty prominent rough eyebrow ridges. It’s kinda unclear what these were used for, but it’s a neat little detail that I’ve added in to the new design!

WWD2020: Coelophysis bauri

I felt like I needed a long-term art project to keep me going through isolation, so I’m undertaking an entirely original project that nobody has ever done before.

..... I’m redesigning the animals from Walking With Dinosaurs to be up to date with modern palaeontology, and I’ll also be deconstructing some of the differences between the original designs and my new interpretation. WWD has been one of the most influential pieces of media on me, both as a very young child and now as a still-young-but-less-so palaeoartist. It portrays dinosaurs in realistic, natural behaviours and appearances unlike anything that’s ever been done since, and this little (or not-so-little) project is basically my personal homage to the documentary series that’s inspired so many people to get into palaeontology!

Annnnd we’re kicking it all off with Coelophysis from Episode 1: New Blood!

The Coelophysis in WWD actually hold up really well anatomically, and are probably one of the dinosaurs that have aged the least since 1999, since it’s been completely known and very comprehensively studied for decades. The biggest skeletal difference is that hands, which in the series are shown in the classic “bunny hands” posture with the palms facing back towards the body and the fingers curled up, which you can see better in this shot:

This will probably be a very common thread in my dinosaur redesigns especially, but we now know that almost all dinosaurs’ wrists were pretty much fixed with the palms facing inwards, and were unable to rotate them.

In terms of integument though, sad cold naked Coelophysis has been replaced by floof. Even though we don’t have direct fossil evidence for feathers on early theropods, it’s very likely that fluff was ancestral to theropoda if not all dinosaurs, making Coelophysis a very likely candidate for feathers. I absolutely love the colour patterns of the WWD Coelophysis so I wanted to keep it as close as possible, but I allowed the fluffiness of the feathers on the body to break up the pattern a bit and make it a bit messier.

WWD2020: Postosuchus kirkpatricki

First of all, I’d just like to say a huge thank you to everyone for all your kind words on my first WWD2020 post and your excitement for this project!! I’m so glad this is something that so many other people are passionate about, and I hope y’all enjoy the rest of these!

And now onto the next reconstruction, and a very topical one given its recent victory in Triassic March Madness! So this one’s dedicated to @wtf-triassic​, it’s Postosuchus from Episode 1: New Blood!

Honestly as far as I’m aware, the Postosuchus in WWD is actually pretty good! It’s decently-proportioned, with a long, low body, a very chunky neck, and even the weirdly-humanoid flat feet (they’re not visible in this picture but trust me they’re there). The head is a bit wonky, and one particular thing that I noticed as a kid is that the Postosuchus in the series never actually fully closes its mouth. In my redesign I’ve equipped it with a set of reptilian lips, allowing it to properly close its jaws and keep the inside of its mouth moist.

The biggest difference, however, is its posture. WWD portrays Postosuchus as an obligate quadruped, “too top-heavy to walk on two legs”. As our understanding of raisuchian anatomy has improved in the two decades since, however, it has become clear that the front legs of Postosuchus were actually physically incapable of functioning as walking limbs. This means more modern Postosuchus reconstructions have pulled a 180 and now portray it as a fully bipedal animal. We were so close though!!

Personally, Postosuchus was one of the most iconic species from WWD growing up, and I spent plenty of hours on my hands and knees roaring and attacking imaginary Placerias. The colour patterns on this one are superb, which I’ll probably be saying very frequently. The vibrant sandy reds and browns make it blend with the desert environment, and it wasn’t until closely examining the design for this that I noticed there’s a bit of blue-grey in there as well!

So yeah, that’s Postosuchus! An already-weird land-crocodile apex predator that’s turned out to be and even weirder bipedal land-crocodile apex predator with uncomfortably human-like legs and tiny little baby hands. Look at those, they’re adorable!