Tantum's Construct

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It was probably an odd choice to start the comic with a party in their weird magic brain dimension, but I think it’s a neat decision. It’s an excuse to have all of the characters in the same place, and it also sets up one of the most important parts of the magic system, the collective consciousness itself. It’s basically a mind melding place where all their dreams can connect, and it also stores real objects that can be teleported to wherever one of them physically is.

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Genuinely what did the Velociraptor do? Ive toyed around with how to bring this joke back, and I can’t decide if Penta should assume every Velociraptor is the bastard who stole his cornbread, or if he’s so trusting that he doesn’t realize it’s the same Velociraptor who keeps stealing it.

Pride and allyship is even more important this year. I’m genuinely disappointed in most of the world.

Not all of these character arcs have happened yet, not all of them know about their queerness yet!!

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Iconic page. Actually, I just realized that as far as the comic has been made, we haven’t seen Chasma do any magic other than once. I should really get on that. Light and Darkness magic are essentially the same thing in different flavors, and mostly consist of the types of things you’d assume magic would be. Invisibility, levitation, teleportation, that whole shebang.

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Honestly if I ever rewrite this I’m gonna have them just making out super grossly, like in that one Christmas drawing I made, with the art meme where they’re basically eating each other’s mouths.

Also Suki shows up here! I didn’t expect people to like her as much as they did on Instagram. It’s a nice surprise! Anyways she looks a bit off now and again until I learn how to use her body’s design. I started working on this before I had finished very much concept art for other species and other characters (Chasma’s salmon color BARELY scraped by, she was about to be that bubblegum purplish pink she was in that lip sync animation). Because of that rush, Suki looks literally nothing like a spinosaur. She just had a triangle head. Not even the iconic spinosaur crest.

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Penta and his neutral rizz. I think Chasma likes him for his terrible jokes and emotional availability. Somewhat alarmingly I’m willing to put money on the fact that she also likes being the smartest person in a relationship. Except I said it, so that makes it true.

Did you know I made up human names for all of them?? Chasmine and Pendleton, shortened to either Penn or Pennie.

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IMPORTANT LORE LOCATION, important lore location! We’ll be seeing a lot of Ceratopsia later on, but it doesn’t look like this anymore.

I wonder if all those crystals have anything to do with the mineral elemental…

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Penta dreams of the color yellow. That is all.

If you’ve been reading on Instagram, there is a fixed coloring error on this page! Penta’s nose horn was originally all dark green and missing the off white stripe! That same dark green is also used on Chasma and Mapu

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I’ve gotta remember to have that Edmontosaurus regalis caricature artist show up again in the future. He’s funny. That background is Kallysia, where the next chapter takes place, but back when it was a jungle instead of a desert. In canon it’s always been a desert, but you know what I mean!

Don’t tell my children that I have a favorite, but it’s Penta. He’s a little dumbass but he’s the sweetest thing. Not only is he the first one I created when I was like eleven or something, but he’s so dumbbitch coded that I, thE dumbbitch just adores him. I have a long history of writing protagonists with my own personality (would suggest, it makes writing easy), and it all started with the little Pentaceratops.

My other comic with the humans that I’ll make eventually (I’ve always used Tantum’s Construct as the practice version since its world is compelling enough to suffer through mid art and writing) has a protagonist named Veronica Sousa, and she has a very similar personality to Penta. In fact, she’s literally just what I aspire to be like. In a good way and in a bad way. One day we’ll be getting updates on that comedy-drama character-study type device. But for now, funny dinosaurs!!

Chasma and Tay are pretty much tied for second place, though! I feel like they’re both the most realistic characters regarding their depth and reactions, considering that they don’t share my own brain cells. Chasma’s very emotionally driven, but in a selfish way. Like how she only felt bad about Monty’s birthday because it made HER come across as a bad friend. Meanwhile Tay is basically a case study of people who can’t be persuaded by anyone but themselves. If he didn’t come to a conclusion on his own, he’s gonna keep making the same mistakes until he does.

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That’s right, your ol pal Sedge supports semiaquatic Deinocheirus theory

I’ve had to slowly stop adding paleontology jabs because they keep becoming irrelevant 😵‍💫 In the original version of the following chapter, two characters argue whether a third character was a Tarbosaurus or a Turannosaurus bataar (older refrance), which I updated into two characters arguing over whether a third character was a Saurophaganax or an Allosaurus maximus. It’s apparently a sauropod now, but Saurophaganax is already in the comic. Fortunately, I preemptively designed it to be my Allosaurus but a pallet swap!

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Look how weirdly short Monty’s legs are. The character designs have very slowly drifted into forms that’re a lot easier to express emotion and action, and also in a direction where different groups of animals are distinguishable. You’ll see that Mapu especially suffers from my old everyone-has-a-circle-head approach. The more defined head and body shapes of my recent work are a lot better.

Back when I drew this, I remade the entire thing. The original layout was very cramped with essentially two pages crammed into one. It was a good decision to redo it, although it is still a bit darker than it should probably be!