Safari: New for 2017

[stargatedalek]

I own it, although admittedly purely because it's aesthetic is so pleasing. It does a decent job in the background as the half starved juvenile forced to feed only after it's licensed JP adults have taken their fill.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

For me it's a banner year...we are getting. A psittacosaurus.......Love to know who sculpted it?     Just for gravy another diplodocus to display with my vert ..I could not be more happy.   Did I mention we are getting a psittacosaurus?

[tanystropheus]

This year Safari will put the bar very high in terms of prehistoric animals.

...

I think Doug himself said that he didn't do all of the sculpts. 13 figures in one season (more or less) would be asking a lot of one man!

Doug Watson is a super sculptor. I'm sure he could sculpt a few dozen models per year without showing any signs of fatigue. The limitation is probably from Safari Ltd's side.

[Flaffy]

Surprisingly, the einiosaurus is the least expensive of them all for now!
Safari was always a little harder to afford than, lets say, CollectA.
Hopefully I'll scarp enough money to purchase them!

[Flaffy]

Anyone getting Saurian vibes from the t-rex silhouette? Anyone?

[tyrantqueen]

Everyone is compalining about the new Wild Safari Velociraptor?

May i remind you all that the first one looked like this.

*snip*

I been asking them to remake this abomination since last year, and your all complaining that its not something different?  Plus YES parasaurolophus is a common species, but The Wild safari line is in dire need of one. since the most common species is out of the way, we can now ask them to make a new Ornithopod species (like a Hypacrosaurus, or a Brachylophosaurus) Also I think it looks exceptional, even better then the Favorite and (Dare I say these blasphemous words?) Battat!!!!

Really the only thing im disappointed with is that the Giga has a base and the other bipeds do not,.  Honestly all this complaining makes me feel sorry for Doug Watson who works hard to make some of these models(which ever ones they may be).   

It's not an "abomination", not from an artistic standpoint. Sculpturally it is stunning. I still have one in my collection and love it.

[Gwangi]

Right? Abomination is a term I would reserve for something like the Schleich Velociraptor, any of them.

[Takama]

Everyone is compalining about the new Wild Safari Velociraptor?

May i remind you all that the first one looked like this.



I been asking them to remake this abomination since last year, and your all complaining that its not something different?  Plus YES parasaurolophus is a common species, but The Wild safari line is in dire need of one. since the most common species is out of the way, we can now ask them to make a new Ornithopod species (like a Hypacrosaurus, or a Brachylophosaurus) Also I think it looks exceptional, even better then the Favorite and (Dare I say these blasphemous words?) Battat!!!!

Really the only thing im disappointed with is that the Giga has a base and the other bipeds do not,.  Honestly all this complaining makes me feel sorry for Doug Watson who works hard to make some of these models(which ever ones they may be).   

Even though it is an 'abomination', it is aesthetically pleasing (despite the shrink-wrapping), distinctive and has one of the best dynamic poses ever for a dinosaur toy.

Maybe, the Giga really needs the base. The last Giga skipped leg day.

Well IF the rest of the bipeds had bases i would not care, but they dont, and most of Safaris outing have been base free, evean though there well crafted.  Besides i think one Basic Giant Cacaradotosaur is enough for me.  I hope They do make the smaller Concavenator next year.

[sauroid]

Everyone is compalining about the new Wild Safari Velociraptor?

May i remind you all that the first one looked like this.



I been asking them to remake this abomination since last year, and your all complaining that its not something different?  Plus YES parasaurolophus is a common species, but The Wild safari line is in dire need of one. since the most common species is out of the way, we can now ask them to make a new Ornithopod species (like a Hypacrosaurus, or a Brachylophosaurus) Also I think it looks exceptional, even better then the Favorite and (Dare I say these blasphemous words?) Battat!!!!

Really the only thing im disappointed with is that the Giga has a base and the other bipeds do not,.  Honestly all this complaining makes me feel sorry for Doug Watson who works hard to make some of these models(which ever ones they may be).   

are you implying that you were the one responsible for Safari making an updated/accurate Velociraptor?
i dont think anyone is dissing the new WS figures AT ALL. everyone here respects Doug Watson and adores his work.

[Takama]

are you implying that you were the one responsible for Safari making an updated/accurate Velociraptor?
i dont think anyone is dissing the new WS figures AT ALL. everyone here respects Doug Watson and adores his work.

Not at all, I was stating that i sent messages to Safari stating how much i would love to see a new Feathered Velociraptor on Facebook.  The old one looks like an abomination when compared to all of the other models in the line(from 2008-preasant), which all range from Decent(Guanlong to Exceptional(Everything from 2015, and a couple 2016), the only Safari Toy thats worse then that Velociraptor is this T.Rex

http://dinotoyblog.com/2010/10/15/tyrannosaurus-wild-safari-by-safari-ltd-2006-sculpt/

Which is straight up ugly, and im glad they gave us the 2011 one and im surprised that they made a New Feathered one which is an even further improvement. 

There are other Dinosaurs from 2008-present i wish they remake in the near future. Mainly the Allosaurus and Dilophosaurus, which seem shrink-wrapped(or lean) when compared to all there latest works. The reason i did not suggest those to them is because the Velociraptor is the single dinosaur that i wish was remade first, because while the Two mentioned theropods are not perfect, they are still good enough for now to be added to my collection, unlike the old Velociraptor

[Doug Watson]

I think Doug himself said that he didn't do all of the sculpts. 13 figures in one season (more or less) would be asking a lot of one man!

What, do less an miss out on all the fun comments! I did seven of these plus a bunch of the extant species like the American Alligator, Collared Lizard, Whitetail Buck, Howler Monkey etc

[Faelrin]

I'm a bit late to finding out about Safari LTD's dinosaur figures, and such, but I've been gaining interest in them/their figures after finding out about their Ammonite, Yutyrannus, Dunkleosteus, Cambrian Life TOOB, etc. Many of these new figures have me very interested and excited now (feathered T. rex, Velociraptor, Deinocherius, and Psittacosaurus for example, and while unrelated to prehistoric life, I definitely need the Werewolf figure. I love werewolves and don't even have a single figure of one yet, for shame). I can't wait to see those that haven't been shown yet, and I'm hoping I'll be able to splurge on some for the holiday season and after. The extant animal figures look great as well. I may get some of those down the road too. Between Saurian, the BoTM line, and then these, I think I will have spent more in this single year then I have in the past couple of years, and possibly compared to the years to come.

[Sim]

If a good amount of a dinosaur's head is known, I think a very accurate toy of the dinosaur will tend to not be an accurate representation of another species with a good amount of the head known.  Dinosaurs get classified as different species due to differences in their skeletons, and a lot of the time these differences would be visible when the dinosaur was alive.  Especially since different species of dinosaurs, even species within the same genus, tend to have skull differences that would be visible in life.

What other dromaeosaurid species would be able to stand in for a larger number of species then?  It wouldn't be one without a known skull since as you mentioned, a species with a known skull can work for them.  I can't think of any.  I think this Velociraptor can work for some species with quite incompletely known skulls too like Adasaurus and Acheroraptor.

I disagree, especially in animals with extensive soft integument skeletal differences that don't effect the general proportions are unlikely to be visible. For example a Deinonychus or Utahraptor could be interchanged with each other, Dakotaraptor, Bambiraptor, Zhenyuanlong, Tianyuraptor, Atrociraptor, or Dromaeosaurus. It wouldn't be a perfect match no, but it would be convincing so long as the feathering was extensive enough to blur proportional differences (the jaws being closed would also go a long way in that regard). That being said I had a great time digging through all the photos of dromaeosaur skulls I could find, and I found quite a few that could pass interchangeably with Velociraptor, so it seems I need to eat my words regardless! And very happily eating them at that.

Different dinosaur species will have general proportion differences somewhere not always, but a lot of the time, though.  As for the examples you gave:

- The described remains of Utahraptor are very fragmentary and don't include a lot of its head.  However, the remains of around six more Utahraptor are currently being described.  This is the thread about it: http://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=2976.msg82764#msg82764  As mentioned in the link in the first post there, "The recent finds include never-before-seen bones that are already changing scientific views of the Utahraptor anatomy."  "We're really going to have a different view of this guy".  Scott Hartman's done a new Utahraptor skeletal for the upcoming paper but isn't going to show it until the paper is out.  However, he has released this silhouette which incorporates the new Utahraptor remains: http://skeletaldrawing.tumblr.com/post/80334261998/prehistoric-birds-silhouette-of-the  He also put a crossed out sign on his Utahraptor skeletal and included this at the start of the description: "Do not restore the current skeletal reconstruction. Utahraptor does NOT look like this. It's stranger and less Deinonychus-like than I realized. ": http://scotthartman.deviantart.com/art/Plunderer-from-Utah-179491659  So it looks like Utahraptor and Deinonychus might not be interchangeable in figure form.  Since this paper that looks set to bring some big changes to how Utahraptor is depicted is coming, I think Utahraptor would have been a terrible choice for a new Wild Safari figure as it would probably end up outdated when this new paper comes out.  I'm inclined to think Utahraptor shouldn't count as a dromaeosaurid that can be interchanged with the others you mentioned since we can only look at fragmentary remains, but more remains of it are known and being described but we don't know exactly what they mean for Utahraptor's appearance other than a big change in how it looks it seems.

- It's known now that Deinonychus's head is long and that older reconstructions of it with a relatively short head are wrong.  (Deinonychus having a head similar to Velociraptor is wrong too.)  Deinonychus has been reconstructed with inaccurate heads for so long that I think inaccurate Deinonychus heads have become quite ingrained.  I know you said you don't mind if figures aren't a perfect match, but I think Deinonychus's head is too different from these other dromaeosaurids with known heads to be interchangeable with them:
Deinonychus: http://scotthartman.deviantart.com/art/Terrible-Claw-310579803
Bambiraptor: http://scotthartman.deviantart.com/art/Bambiraptor-47985992
Dromaeosaurus: http://scotthartman.deviantart.com/art/Best-guess-Dromaeosaurus-536236816
Tianyuraptor: http://www.paleofile.com/Dinosaurs/Theropods/Tianyuraptor.asp
Zhenyuanlong as well.  It looks like a Deinonychus figure can work as Atrociraptor though, but that's just one species and a species who's head is quite incompletely known: http://www.paleofile.com/Dinosaurs/Theropods/atrociraptor.asp
All those other dromaeosaurids have heads that are very different to Deinonychus's, most noticeably due to being a lot shorter.

- Dakotaraptor's head isn't known, I thought we weren't counting species without a known head?  Otherwise a lot more dromaeosaurids could be listed!

If you don't mind a figure having relatively small differences to another species, a few of those other dromaeosaurids you mentioned could stand in for each other I guess, but then the new WS Velociraptor would be able to stand in for more species too including ones that are more similar to it than those dromaeosaurids you mentioned are to each other.  Although after going through dromaeosaurid skulls I imagine you already know this.  Anyway, I'm glad you had a good time looking at dromaeosaurid skulls and made some new discoveries.

[Gwangi]

I think Doug himself said that he didn't do all of the sculpts. 13 figures in one season (more or less) would be asking a lot of one man!

What, do less an miss out on all the fun comments! I did eight of these plus a bunch of the extant species like the American Alligator, Collared Lizard, Whitetail Buck, Howler Monkey etc

I was excited to see that Collard lizard on the Safari website. They're one of my favorite species of lizard, glad to know you sculpted it.

[Sim]

Everyone is compalining about the new Wild Safari Velociraptor?

May i remind you all that the first one looked like this.



I been asking them to remake this abomination since last year, and your all complaining that its not something different?

Even though it is an 'abomination', it is aesthetically pleasing (despite the shrink-wrapping), distinctive and has one of the best dynamic poses ever for a dinosaur toy.

Regarding the bolded part, what would that be, running with both of its wrists broken leading to it dragging a hand across the ground?  If it didn't have pronated hands it wouldn't have just been more accurate, it being in a running pose would also be more believable.  As for it being aesthetically pleasing, that's a matter of opinion.

[SBell]

I think Doug himself said that he didn't do all of the sculpts. 13 figures in one season (more or less) would be asking a lot of one man!

What, do less an miss out on all the fun comments! I did eight of these plus a bunch of the extant species like the American Alligator, Collared Lizard, Whitetail Buck, Howler Monkey etc

I was excited to see that Collard lizard on the Safari website. They're one of my favorite species of lizard, glad to know you sculpted it.

It does look really great. Maybe, Doug, you can convince them to do a real Draco for the IC line? It just seems like it would be so perfect!

[Doug Watson]

It does look really great. Maybe, Doug, you can convince them to do a real Draco for the IC line? It just seems like it would be so perfect!

That is a great idea, for some reason I thought one had been done. I will pass that on. I would love to do one like this but I would be afraid to ask what the painting costs would be.

[Doug Watson]

Even though it is an 'abomination', it is aesthetically pleasing (despite the shrink-wrapping), distinctive and has one of the best dynamic poses ever for a dinosaur toy.

Regarding the bolded part, what would that be, running with both of its wrists broken leading to it dragging a hand across the ground?  If it didn't have pronated hands it wouldn't have just been more accurate, it being in a running pose would also be more believable.  As for it being aesthetically pleasing, that's a matter of opinion.

You know I still like that piece as sculpture and no I didn't do it. As a sculptor I do find it aesthetically pleasing.

[suspsy]

So, Doug sculpted all but five of the prehistoric figures, eh? Well, his style is about as recognizable as a fingerprint and it's clear that the T. rex and the Velociraptor are his and the Diplodocus and Giganotosaurus aren't. We'll just have to wait for images of the rest of the line, but I reckon it'll be easy to determine what the remaining three non-Watsons are.

[SpartanSquat]

Wait Doug, you sculpted 8 prehistoric creatures of 13 confirmed?