Shrink-wrapping in paleoart

[suspsy]

The tyrannosaurus skull is a bit shrink wrapped (every line has its hits and misses), but I don't see any shrink wrapping on the spinosaurus. I was also referring specifically to the hips.

To be honest I feel like this has just gone so far off topic at this point, but I just want to finish with saying that I really don't like that CollectA shrink wraps only certain parts of the animal, it just feels incredibly unnatural and unbalanced.

I don't like it either, but again, it's not a major issue for me, at least not yet. Shrink wrapping has been part of paleoart for so long now, it seems unreasonable to expect it to vanish completely anytime soon. The debate is by no means settled among paleontologists. And some prominent paleoartists such as Luis V. Rey and Gregory S. Paul still do employ a bit of it in their depictions.





It's hard for any toy company to keep up on current discoveries and theories. A few years ago, the Carnegie Velociraptor probably would have been praised to the sky, but instead many reviewers have commented on the fact that it doesn't have enough feathers. And Darren Naish has gone on record as saying that he's met some paleontologists who don't even care how dinosaurs are depicted.

Given those uncertain circumstances, I don't consider shrink wrapping nearly as great a faux pas as say, omitting or skimping on feathers. Or pronated wrists.

https://qilong.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/whether-shrink-wrapping/

[Sim]

The tyrannosaurus skull is a bit shrink wrapped (every line has its hits and misses), but I don't see any shrink wrapping on the spinosaurus. I was also referring specifically to the hips.

To be honest I feel like this has just gone so far off topic at this point, but I just want to finish with saying that I really don't like that CollectA shrink wraps only certain parts of the animal, it just feels incredibly unnatural and unbalanced.

On the Spinosaurus, the tail looks shrink wrapped.  Such a thin tail is really not plausible.  I still think it's a nice figure though.

If they are designed/marketed to educate children that that is all the more reason to be harsh! Scleich doesn't simply make kids toys, they makes kids toys and market them as teaching implement's! Personally I find it disgusting that they would do such marketing and yet still make those cartoony figures.

I agree!  As a kid, I preferred toys that looked like real animals/prehistoric animals to ones that looked like cartoony animals, so I don't know why Schleich makes cartoony prehistoric animal toys to appeal to kids more.  Unless they're making them primarily for REALLY young children.  It makes me wonder, why don't they make their extant animals cartoony too?

O_O  The tail on that Tyrannosaurus is just not right!  It's known Tyrannosaurus's tail wasn't that short: http://scotthartman.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-mess-with-T-rexes-472216626  That's actually shrinking the tail!

[suspsy]

O_O  The tail on that Tyrannosaurus is just not right!  It's known Tyrannosaurus's tail wasn't that short: http://scotthartman.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-mess-with-T-rexes-472216626  That's actually shrinking the tail!

I know! And that's one of Paul's more recent illustrations. It's from the Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs. As I said, shrink wrapping isn't going away any time soon.

[suspsy]

Came across yet another example of the pervasiveness of shrink wrapping at Chapters tonight. These are but a few samples from the 2014 book Discovering Dinosaurs by Bob Walters, a well-respected paleoartist whose career spans decades.







So again, CollectA is hardly alone when it comes to the shrink wrapping issue.

[gfxtwin]

I'm guilty of this via my paintings, lol.  I rarely ever see many therapod paintings without that look, but I suppose I can see how it seems like there could/should be thicker face musculature.  Sometimes when image searching I find awesome paleoart of dinosaurs that don't have the shrink-wrapped look though, this is rad IMO:

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Would shoulder blades be visible ? Most animals you can't see them some hardly at all. I've made many with a small " hump" showing where the shoulder blade is like I've observed in many figures/reconstructions, but I was thinking how invisible a shoulder blade really is.

[Halichoeres]

Would shoulder blades be visible ? Most animals you can't see them some hardly at all. I've made many with a small " hump" showing where the shoulder blade is like I've observed in many figures/reconstructions, but I was thinking how invisible a shoulder blade really is.

Man, good question. Some animals at least, it totally depends on what it's doing. When a cat is just sitting there, I don't see its shoulder blade, but when it's stalking, at least one is very prominent with every step. Similarly, when a person throws their shoulders back, the scapulae become evident. I will say I don't typically see adult birds' shoulder blades, but if an animal had down rather than contour feathers, could be a different story.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

Would shoulder blades be visible ? Most animals you can't see them some hardly at all. I've made many with a small " hump" showing where the shoulder blade is like I've observed in many figures/reconstructions, but I was thinking how invisible a shoulder blade really is.

Man, good question. Some animals at least, it totally depends on what it's doing. When a cat is just sitting there, I don't see its shoulder blade, but when it's stalking, at least one is very prominent with every step. Similarly, when a person throws their shoulders back, the scapulae become evident. I will say I don't typically see adult birds' shoulder blades, but if an animal had down rather than contour feathers, could be a different story.

I'm thinking to apply this to my current 1:1 Stegosaurus. Cats were the only animal I really thought of that showed them well. Assuming nothing is covering them, lizards don't really show shoulder blades unless they are emaciated I think?

[Halichoeres]

Would shoulder blades be visible ? Most animals you can't see them some hardly at all. I've made many with a small " hump" showing where the shoulder blade is like I've observed in many figures/reconstructions, but I was thinking how invisible a shoulder blade really is.

Man, good question. Some animals at least, it totally depends on what it's doing. When a cat is just sitting there, I don't see its shoulder blade, but when it's stalking, at least one is very prominent with every step. Similarly, when a person throws their shoulders back, the scapulae become evident. I will say I don't typically see adult birds' shoulder blades, but if an animal had down rather than contour feathers, could be a different story.

I'm thinking to apply this to my current 1:1 Stegosaurus. Cats were the only animal I really thought of that showed them well. Assuming nothing is covering them, lizards don't really show shoulder blades unless they are emaciated I think?

This walking elephant:


and this displaying collared lizard:


both seem to have visible, but not terribly prominent, shoulder blades. I guess now that I'm thinking about it, with the exception of turtles and maybe some placodonts (?), shoulder girdles have to be outside the ribcage. So unless there's a huge muscular hump, like on a bison, you'd probably expect the shoulder blades to protrude somewhat, but probably more so laterally than dorsally.

[Blade-of-the-Moon]

So adding it in some form, even just gradually would be good.  I can achieve that now with wire or add it with foam later.

[Halichoeres]

Of course, take everything I say with a grain of salt, because I study animals with no necks, whose shoulder girdles are covered by their gill opercles 

[Papi-Anon]

This was the biggest issue I had with the documentary "When Dinosaurs Roamed America", many of the dinosaurs and other Mesozoic fauna had numerous designs that looked like skin over a skeleton and nothing more. To be fair, I'd already seen WWD before that aired, so I had sort of raised the bar on my standards beforehand.

[Gwangi]

Would shoulder blades be visible ? Most animals you can't see them some hardly at all. I've made many with a small " hump" showing where the shoulder blade is like I've observed in many figures/reconstructions, but I was thinking how invisible a shoulder blade really is.

Man, good question. Some animals at least, it totally depends on what it's doing. When a cat is just sitting there, I don't see its shoulder blade, but when it's stalking, at least one is very prominent with every step. Similarly, when a person throws their shoulders back, the scapulae become evident. I will say I don't typically see adult birds' shoulder blades, but if an animal had down rather than contour feathers, could be a different story.

For what it's worth...

[Halichoeres]

Bahahaha, gross but illuminating.

[Gwangi]

Bahahaha, gross but illuminating.

You'll never look at a naked dromaeosaur the same way again! I bet they would have looked pretty similar.

[Meso-Cenozoic]

I'm guilty of this via my paintings, lol.  I rarely ever see many therapod paintings without that look, but I suppose I can see how it seems like there could/should be thicker face musculature.  Sometimes when image searching I find awesome paleoart of dinosaurs that don't have the shrink-wrapped look though, this is rad IMO:

That is probably the very first feathered T. rex that I actually find quite beautiful. I love the iridescent peacock-like colorings. And besides the feathering, he's really quite a well done and realistic looking T. rex figure overall.