All Yesterdays Came Out Four Years Ago!

[suspsy]

To mark the occasion, Darren Naish has written a good article about the scourge of shrink wrapping:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/dinosaurs-and-the-anti-shrink-wrapping-revolution/

[Neosodon]

Interesting article. Find it funny how they blame the whole shrink wrapping epidemic on Gregory S Paul. The most infamous shrink wrapper award should go to Ely Kish.

[CityRaptor]

Yeah. Although Paul really was a spokesperson for that. Currently reading "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" and he clearly advocates skinny Theropods.

[Patrx]

Four years? Aw, man, I'm starting to feel old.
Great article! TetZoo is always worth reading. As for Kish, I remember reading somewhere that Dale Russell directed a lot of her work in terms of dinosaur anatomy. Kish's own expertise, clearly, was artistic - as distracting as the shrinkwrapping is, there's no denying the beauty of her environments, colors, and composition.

[Tyto_Theropod]

Four years? Can it really be that long?! And here am I still thinking of All Yesterdays as this cool 'new' book... To be honest, it really changed the way I thought about dinosaurs, including how I drew them (not that I can claim to be a palaeoartist, more someone who draws dinosaurs for fun) and even which models I chose to buy. I see shrink-wrapping in so many, from your average off-brand Chinasaur right up to the dizzy heights of David Krentz and Galileo Hernandez-Nunez (no offence to them, they are both extremely talented artists). I find myself taking far more off my ridiculously long wishlist because I want to surround myself with at least reasonably accurate dinosaurs, and ones that you could see as living, breathing animals rather than skeletal zombies. It means I can get a more realistic view of what it might really be like to see one in the flesh. So if nothing else, All Yesterdays' arguments saved me a lot of money!

I realise that before I got to know the likes of Naish, Hartmann and the wonderful folks on this forum, I'd taken shrink-wrapping for granted because that's just what dinosaurs looked like, right? It's quite amazing and rather sad when you think how powerful conventional images and pop cult can be in influencing how we imagine long-dead organisms. When you say 'dinosaur' to the average person, it's likely they'll still think of something very outdated and won't be aware of recent evidence proving otherwise, even in cases when it's been made a big deal of in the news. To me, anyway, that is quite a sad thing. It's not like we need to know about prehistoric life, but for me it's wonderful to have that deeper insight into our planet and its history.

I still feel that the All Yesterdays approach can be taken way too far, and I see people putting ridiculous amounts of feathers, quills and skin folds on their dinosaurs, and I also see a lot of people take shrink-wrapping to heart a little too much and depicting what, to me at least, are amusingly obese creatures. All of which is fine when the artist knows that they're being speculative, but all too often I've seen people insisting that this is definitely, definitely how dinosaurs looked and pointing the finger at more conservative takes. It's come to be a kind of 'reverse shrink-wrapping'...

Anyway, apologies for the text wall. Reading the article, I realised how much this kind of thing had made me think.

[Neosodon]

I still feel that the All Yesterdays approach can be taken way too far, and I see people putting ridiculous amounts of feathers, quills and skin folds on their dinosaurs, and I also see a lot of people take shrink-wrapping to heart a little too much and depicting what, to me at least, are amusingly obese creatures. All of which is fine when the artist knows that they're being speculative, but all too often I've seen people insisting that this is definitely, definitely how dinosaurs looked and pointing the finger at more conservative takes. It's come to be a kind of 'reverse shrink-wrapping'...

Although they are rather rare I have seen a couple like you described. I just hope they don't become a thing.