Footing about an Ankylosaur

Albertonykus was nice enough to alert me to a bunch of papers about Ankylosaur feet and how they apparently look more like Sauropod feet than traditionally rendered.

Sadly the papers were all in technical speak which I can't read effectively enough to be sure of how to draw, and the diagrams only helped me a little bit. Hopefully someone will want to take a crack at them on the Palaeo-art Database once it launches here in the new year.

So I took a leap into the dark, which I sure is wrong.
So attack with feedback science enabled people. Let's get these feet fixed!

Starting to look like an Ankylosaur

Been toying away on the Minmi. It is finally starting to feel like I might be getting it a bit right.

There is still work to be done, but do let me know what you think. I've only added the bigger scutes to the body itself, not the limbs, and I'm not sure if I need more on the head or not.

Oh well here it is.

I have a big post on Ankylosaurs in art coming up on ART Evolved.

Ankylosaurus, like no living animal

I'm hitting a very interesting set of issues in recreating my Ankylosaur. That namely being there is nothing even remotely like an Ankylosaur alive today.

At least if the way the three palaeontologists I've talked to about them were accurate (in their defense none were specialists in armoured Dinosaurs). What I gathered was that all the scales of their skin had been hardened to some extent. The more advanced the Ankie the more hard the skin. However this essentially meant the whole (adult) animal was covered in varying sized bones on its hide. A true exoskeleton.

The problem is no reptile today has this type of protection. At least not to the degree and complexity of an Ankyosaur. So how do you reconstruct them?

There seem to a lot of memes and trends in how Ankylosaurs are recreated. I'm collecting various "official", professional, and museum sanctioned Minmi recreations to supplement Peter Bond's original Minmi post on his blog. All the recreations I'm collecting should have had scientist input at some stage, which leads me to hope there was science behind the armour placements. There are a few methods and choices I follow, but others are making me wonder if there are some really rampant Ankie armour memes out there. Standby for a more detailed post on ART Evolved, and possibly reposted here.

At moment I'm just trying to finish the baseline of my Minmi so that I can play next week.

This is the animal completely covered with baseline textures. Thought and comments?

This is the body and legs covered in actual armour objects via a surface replicator (my favourite tool of all time!). I think I need to bring the scutes up on the limbs to about knee level, but otherwise I'm really digging this look so far. That and I'm really starting to like my unique warning colouration scheme. Of all Dinosaurs to be flamboyantly coloured I'm thinking the hard and prickly Ankies were the ones to sport this look!

Thoughts?

Why Ankylosaurs are like onions

Perhaps my years long battle with 3D feathers has finally paid off...

My new quick and easy method seems to work perfectly fine on armour too. Okay easy yes, sadly the quick part gets taken out with rendering times.

Armour is requiring a few more layers than feathers. Though I may try multiple layers of feathers later to see if it helps them.

First I need a rough colour scheme. I opted for a bright coloured scheme as I see (grownup) Ankyies wanting to warn predators they're not to be messed with. I got this rough pattern by mixing together a few different snakes.

I tried to build initial armour into my standard skin texture. The results as you can see are wanting.


Lucky for me that was but one of many layers. As of layer 2 all is covered up.

This is all still just a texture.

Next I applied physical objects to the skin with a replicator to get actual osteoderms in place.

The first ones were too small, so I came at it with another round of larger ones, which I think do an admirable job.

Thoughts, comments so far?

I HATE armoured Dinosaurs!

I think if there is one thing I'm good at in my art is always trying new things. In putting together my new portfolio I can't believe how much my techniques and methods have changed and refined in just 2 years!

The only problem with this constant change is I'm always having to relearn and rethink how to do things when I return to them. My wife has once or twice challenged my focus on Dinosaurs in my art, and if their look were remaining static I'd accept. Thing is I'm never doing them the same way more than 3 times (first model of a "mark" is a break through, second model is me hoping I've finally nailed it, the third model ends with me thinking "this looks terrible!"). I'm constantly coming up with new things to try and work on with them... The rest of my modelling is following them quite well.

So while I've conquered feathers for the time being, there are other Saurian qualities to can still cause me no need of trouble. Enter armoured Dinosaurs...

Armoured Dinosaurs provide me with two very annoying problems.

The first is that without my books, finding good references for them is VERY hard! Added to that the actual placement of their armour seems to be a highly subjective matter for us artists.

The second challenge is getting the armour actually on the critter. In my previous models of Scelidosaur and Ankylosaurus I'd used simply body shaders and than surface replicated major armour pieces on the body. While this was good for my older style Dinosaurs, my recent improvements in texturing have meant I will need to completely overhaul how I do armour...

I will try the solution I have used with feathers. However I'm holding some doubts that it will work properly for bony osteoderms.

We'll see.

I'm trying to make a Minmi. Though as it'll be filling in for mostly unknown NZ Ankies I have a bit of artistic licence.