darkSpyro

Quote:

"Oh, mummy! I can see the fleas, can't you see the fleas?" Clown fleas, highwire fleas and fleas on parade. But with this place... I wanted to give them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real. Something they could see, and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.

Behold the work of Dougal Dixon, a paleontologist and geologist best known for the speculative future books After Man and The New Dinosaurs. You might know him from that Season's Greetings image. You know the one. He's also pretty popular in Japan; they made an exclusive Future Is Wild manga and a stop-motion documentary series for After Man. If you've heard of Primeval, that old BBC sci-fi show, his Night Stalker bats inspired the Future Predator.

You can always quickly identify his art. His animals are either delightfully haunting or just plain lumpy.

****ing Dougal Dixon, he's ****ing something for sure. Not sure which book is weirder, his dinosaur one, or future man one.

Funny thing is, he claims he never even had much say in Man After Man. It was handled by someone else. A lot of the posthumans in that book were copied from another speculative zoologist and artist, Wayne Barlowe.

I love Wayne Barlowe’s stuff. Gosh those colors.



He designed the kaiju in Pacific Rim, as well as some creatures for Avatar. His book Expedition was also adapted into documentary.

I remember that Alien Planet Documentary he designed aliens for, he's honestly a ****ing genius.

Took the words right from my mouth. Sounds like you’d also enjoy Brynn Metheney and Terryl Whitlatch’s work.



This is one of Brynn’s.

I love that ****, I'll look him up

Holy crap, they're great, while also talented


BRYNN GODZILLA! HE'S SO COOL!

Her, actually lol. I really love creature design. I have drawings from when I was little about my own worlds and fantasy animals. One of them was a pug monkey, and it’s exactly what it sounds like.

Look up Almost Real, too. It’s a zine all about this kind of stuff.

I have more but I’m gonna need to think back. There’s a lot of good artists out there, a huge community especially for future animals.

****, I forgot RJ Palmer!

Wow, Almost Real is literally my favorite of what you've shown, it's a bit more my style, I may have to look into it more.

This is by Alexander Ostrowski.



And this one’s by Janine Bertet.

I kinda want to make a paleoart topic...

Tomorrow, maybe. Getting tired. Lots of work goes into building a theme park/zoo with zero safety precautions.

I found a theme song! Eat your heart out, John Williams:

Swimming monkey will never forget you. Hey, he can sing at your wedding! But if he can't make it, I have a back-up.



Another swimming monkey! Oh, an ape, actually.

This is now a paleoart and speculative zoology thread. Because I said so.





You have now entered the Mesozoic. I love the variety of modern paleoart. John Egerkrans and Greer Stothers are good examples of how artists can stylize these animals.

consider this park endorsed

loox good

The park will soon open. Please be mindful of small children and don’t knock on the glass. Those people are the worst and will indefinitely be eaten. I’m not responsible if you’re attacked by a colony of predator rats.



Feisty fellas, aren’t they? I told you there’s no safety precautions. All our funds went into getting sponsorships. Getting all the cloned dinosaurs was pretty cheap. How’d we get an Arrowtongue? Space travel has already been invented, duh.



Oh, and we have the best soft pretzels and buttered popcorn. And who can say no to Dippin’ Dots? Saying don’t feed the animals seems unnecessary but...



I don’t want to see that...

Not again.

Where is my Badger Otter? My Batter or Badder if you will

Hm, interesting. I don't believe we received any badger otters. What time period and planet are they from? Are they main attraction material? We only display the wildest and weirdest of creatures.

I didn’t know this short was public! I kept hearing that it existed, but could only find the stop motion documentary. This kid’s living the dream. Except not really because for these animals to exist humans would have to disappear. I don’t think Dougal stated the true outcome, if humans went extinct or simply left the planet and turned into...those lovely fellows in Man After Man. I’ve never read the book After Man itself; it was fortunately republished last year. I just bought something else from another spec-bio artist, so I’ll have to wait a bit and store up.

Badger Otters are earth creatures during Ice age or so on, literal big otters the size of wolves.

Oh, so like this? We don’t have those on opening day. We’ll get right on it. Making a giant otter is simple. We don’t have many mammals at the moment. Well, any basic mammals that is. We like it extreme! And so do careless parents and their wallets.

What’s that? You’re afraid kids might get nightmares about Raboons?





Hm. I don’t see it. Looks like a friendly face to me.

Yeah, but wolf sized and has a more badger-esque muzzle.

Breaking character for a minute. Did anyone watch Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real? Day of Dragons reminded me of it. It’s speculative media, so I’m putting it here. I remember being very confused by that documentary when I watched it as a kid. Well, it featured a dragon mummy and had scientific evidence, so maybe that meant dragons existed, right? But that doesn’t make sense? I pondered about this for a while. The title of the movie went right over my head, I guess. Minor gore and frozen bodies.



It took me way too long to realize Dougal Dixon didn't illustrate the books himself; he created the concepts and designs. By too long I mean I learned that today. I've just been misreading things.



Here is the full stop motion doc. Animal Planet levels of violence. No subtitles.