Pictures from the Big Quarrel

[Malte279]

It has been a very long time since I last posted fanart in the Gang of Five (or anywhere else). Most of the pictures I drew I have never shown to most of you. I'm afraid it will still take a long, long while before they will be brought up in the LBT gallery. Also bringing it up in the forum allows me to post a few comments along with the pictures and hear your opinions. I don't mean to just reape praise, so please, please if you see room for improvement don't hesitate to tell me. As a distributor of (hopefully) constructive critcism I'm able to stand it too. Most of my pictures show scenes from the stories I wrote, so I will post the pictures in the order of their appearance in the stories. Along with short quotes that describe the pictures' content. I will begin with the first story, the Big Quarrel.

[Malte279]

Meanwhile Littlefoot’s attacks had forced Cera to fall back on a wide part of the rocky path that led up to the high placed tunnel. They were already some meters above the meadow on witch they had played a short time ago and on witch Ducky, Spike and Petrie stood and stared after them. “We must stop them, before one of them might be hurt!” Ducky shouted anxiously. Ducky hadn’t finished her sentence completely when Spike rushed forth so abruptly, that she slid from his back and remained on the ground a bit confused. Petrie swung himself into the air and flit toward the fighting friends while Ducky jumped to her feed and followed Spike as quick as she could.
“Take it back!” growled Littlefoot while he got ready for his next attack.
“Never!” screamed Cera defiantly. Littlefoot charged with bowed head toward Cera.
But she stepped out of way, pressing herself close to the wall of rock. In the moment in which Littlefoot whizzed past her, Cera rammed her head at his flank. Littlefoot screamed, lost his balance and hurled beyond the brink of the path and down the rocky slope.

As all of the colored pencil drawings I made for this story this is one of my earlier pictures. There is one important mistake in the picture though. The scene depicted ought to take place on a rocky path leading up to the very same entrance to the Great Valley through which Littlefoot and the others first entered the Great Valley. It looks however nothing like it. Also that rocky path they are standing on seems to be quite sloping towards the one who looks at the picture.

[F-14 Ace]

Hmm, pretty good.

[Malte279]

^ I've checked out what I wrote on the back of the picture above. It dates from March 10th 2001.

[Malte279]

After a few seconds had passed Cera began to ask: “How is Littlefoot?”
Spike hummed some incomprehensible sounds and distorted his face. Cera understood, that she had to speak differently with Spike. “Is Littlefoot well?” she asked. Spike shook his head. “Has he hurt severely by the fall?” Cera asked horrified. She was very relieved when Spike shook his head again. “Is he very angry?” Cera asked carefully.
Spike looked ad Cera as if she had asked something very stupid when he nodded lingering, and with a very sad face. Cera sighed and after some seconds she asked very silent:
“Do you believe that Littlefoot would forgive me if I apologise to him?”
Spike hesitated; he seemed to be very surprised, and in the same moment Cera realized, that she had admitted her wrong with her last question, and that Spike hadn’t expected this admission. Spike made some helpless sounds and Cera understood that he didn’t know the answer of her last question. First Cera wanted to ask Spike much more questions, but after the last question, in witch she had made more admissions than she had wanted she didn’t want to risk prattling away again. “Thanks Spiky!” she said and had nearly turned round, when she noticed Spike’s look again. Cera was sure, if Spike could have spoken, he would have asked her a lot. “I didn’t want this!” said Cera sudden with slightly shaking voice. Spike’s face changed to a smile. It was like a fantastic present to Cera and so she wasn’t angry about the admissions she had made with her last words. But now she hurried up to come home before anybody would notice her missing.

This is one of the very few pictures I ever created with the computer. I used MS Paint, a program which I really miss now that it won't run under Windows XP. I never got the hang of Paintshop Pro. Not yet at least. Looking at the marvelous pieces of art others are creating with that program it must be good, but to me it seems unnecessary complicate if compared to the simple but effective MS Paint. The picture titled "A nightly colloquy" was finished on March 24th 2001. The characters' legs are to thin (regretably a frequent mistake in my pictures) and the size of Cera's head doesn't match the size of her body (no pun intended).

[Malte279]

She seemed to have not even noticed her. But when Cera wasn’t here to speak with her, what did she want, now in the midst of night? Cera had such a strange determined-sad look and she seemed to have a concrete objective. Ducky stood up silently and pursued Cera quietly, always hiding behind trees or bushes. After a while they reached the
play-meadow. There was no place to hide on the meadow itself, so Ducky stayed behind a small boulder at the border of the wood that bordered to the meadow.
Ducky watched Cera, who had just crossed the meadow, and started to climb up the way that led up to the tunnel. What did she want there? A terrible foreboding arose in Ducky. But that was impossible!

This one is in fact the oldest fully colored LBT picture I ever made. Regretably I didn't write the tate on the back of the picture, but it was probably late 2000 or early 2001. Note that the Ducky in this picture is almost copied from a pose we see in the first movie when "bait" Ducky is sneaking on the sharptooth. The rock on the right is not too different from one that is shown in the same scen. In a fit of senseless vanity I put my initials "MP" on that rock. Something you wouldn't find in any of my later pictures. While according to the text Ducky is hiding behind a rock she is standing behind a rather thin bush in this picture. Also note that the rocky entrance of the Great Valley still doesn't look anything like the one we saw in the original movie. Neither does it look like the entrance we see in the later picture, the first one I posted here.

[Petrie.]

Hmm...I've seen these before...must've been years ago since I can't even remember where I saw them.  I notice the similarity in the Ducky pose, and the Cera/Littlefoot fight scene, but there's nothing wrong with looking at something for an idea.  I think you've done fine, and since these are from 2001, I'm certain you've continued to improve through the years.

[Malte279]

^ Hopefully I have    Thank you for your reaction. You may well have seen some of these pictures as I think you are one of the people to whom I sent most of them via email. A few may have been in other boards before, but I think most of the pictures have never been shown to the "public" before

[Malte279]

Petrie flapped across the ravine, which blocked their way further. He surveyed it carefully with his eyes. At one point, not far away the ravine narrowed a bit. Petrie circled over this point appraising the distance and landed after all on the other side calling his friends:
“Littlefoot! Spike! Here you can do it too.” A bit at a loss he looked at Ducky. She was far smaller than Spike and Littlefoot so it was very doubtfully if she would be able to do the jump on her own too and it was also uncertain if she would be able to hold on Littlefoot’s or Spike’s back during the jump. “Me help you Ducky!” Petrie called and flew over to the others. Ducky shuddered when she looked down the ravine she and the others had nearly fallen down before. But then Petrie seized her shoulders with the claws of his feet. Ducky hold on to his feet, took a run and jumped. Petrie flapped with his wings as fierce as he could, and together they managed to reach the other side with a rough, but save landing.

This is again one of the earliest LBT pictures I ever made. I recall drewing a sketch for this one during a skiing vacation with my school grade in January 2001. The final painting is dated February 11th 2001. None of the characters is copied from a movie posture so apparently I had some practice in drawing them at that time after all (apart from these drawings I frequently practised in a sketch-book). Again especially Littlefoot's limbs are too thin, but altogether this one isn't too bad.

[pokeplayer984]

You know what Malte, I'm so impressed with your pics that I really think you should take your talent of drawing into a carrer.  Who knows, if you're lucky enough, you might end up working with LBT. (With you being so close, perhaps you can get some answers out of them.)  :^.^:

[Malte279]

Thank you for your response and compliment  
I have been thinking about that. However chances are tiny to get a job as an artist nowadays. Much more talented artists then myself are sitting on the street earning a few bucks by drawing portraits of passer-bys.
Also I'm not close enough to the movie makers to ask them any questions about getting a job. I only exchange emails with Aria and her mum who are kind enough to answer them. The very distance from where the land before time is made already prevents me from getting involved into it. Land before time is largely produced in South Corea (where wages are lower than in the United States). One thing I would love to do would be sending them story ideas. If I ever finish a good one before new movies have been issued that contradict this story I would try to get the story on to the desk of someone in charge however small the chances may be.

[Malte279]

A noise behind her startled Cera up from her thoughts. She just wanted to turn round when she saw something on the surface of water out of the angle of her eye.
She glanced at it and twitched. Behind her own reflected image that of a young longneck had appeared!
“Littlefoot!” it flashed through her mind. If she would have seen the reflected image of a sharptooth her scare could not have been bigger. She shrieked, tried simultaneous to turn round and flinch slipped on the slippery rock and fell down into the water.
During the few seconds she needed to crop up again innumerable thoughts buzzed around in her head like a swarm of bees. Why Littlefoot was here? His face had looked very happy. Were Ducky Spike and Petrie here too? Should she be glad, run away or...
In this moment she broke through the surface of water. “Cera! Are you that?”
That hadn’t been Littlefoot’s voice, it had sounded far clearer. Cera risked a careful look back. The longneck that stood at the shore resembled Littlefoot at the first sight, but this longneck had blue eyes instead of Littlefoot’s brown. That was not at all Littlefoot, that was a girl, that was...
“Ali?” “Cera, you are it really?” the longneck asked hopefully.
“Ali!” Cera shouted again still completely disconcerted. “You are it!” Ali answered her own question. Cera jumped out of the lake shook of the water away and ran over to her friend laughing and forgetting her sorrows for a moment.

Rereading the quote that describes the scene of this picture I see my English wasn't too good at the time I translated the story  :^.^:
The Cera in this picture is definitely copied from an image I saw in a land before time magazine of which four issues were published in Germany in 2000 and 2001. Her feet are looking too small I think. Ali is freehand though.
I actually like the reddish surface of the water (reflecting a red dusk sky) yet the rest of the picture doesn't liik like this was a twilight scene. I even didn't bother (or more likely forgot) to give Cera and Ali a proper shadow.
There is a problem about both the story and the picture here. If Cera was to see the reflection of Ali on the water surface, while Ali is standing behind her, I reckon Ali would have to be placed somewhat higher. The peninsular Cera is standing on would need a steep slope or something like this. Otherwise Ali would have to bow over Cera some way to enable her to see her reflection on the water. We don't even see any reflection of Ali in this very picture. I wonder if I didn't notice the problem when I was creating the picture or if I just couldn't help it. Another frequent mistake in my earlier pictures is that Cera has blue eyes while they ought to be green. For my defense I can only say that some land before time illustrators made the same mistake (just take a look at the covers of LBT 4, 5, and 6 for example).

[Petrie.]

These are familiar too.  You must've shown me these when we both getting to know each other.

Shadows are something I've overlooked at times myself, so don't get too down on yourself on what you DIDN'T do four years ago, but what you can do today by learning FROM what you did four years ago.  

[Malte279]

That may well be. You are one of the few people to whom I send most (perhaps all) of that story pictures via email. The huge majority of the pictures haven't been shown to anyone but less than a handful of friends so far, so to most people here they will be new indeed :-)
Once I'll be done with the Big Quarrel pictures (four more to go) I consider posting those from the second story, The Cold Time, if there is any interest in them.

[F-14 Ace]

They all look good, Malte.

[Malte279]

^ Thank you
Here comes the next one:

Ducky and Spike had advanced a considerable distance into the forest on the other side of the river. Again and again they had to climb up or jump down plateaus. Ducky stood tall upright upon Spike’s back looking out for Cera. But although she craned her neck as high as she could she was unable to see much further than to the next brushwood.
“Cera? Cera, where are you? Come out!” she called, but she didn’t get an answer. Suddenly Spike stopped. He had such an uneasy feeling, like a presentiment and he uttered some jumpy sounds. “What’s the matter Spiky?” Ducky asked. And the next moment she felt something too. A slightly tremor ran through the ground, but it was strong enough that she could feel it distinctly, even on Spike’s back. The next moment she heard a low, dull rumbling. “An earthshake!” whispered Ducky terrified stooping behind one of Spike’s little backplates and observing the quivering leafs on the trees.
But Spike turned his face to her and shook his head very slightly. Now Ducky noticed too that the tremors were to periodically and to slightly to be the result of an earthquake and the rumbling was actually a snarling and it didn’t arose from the earth.
Suddenly a husky spitting and roaring could be heard. Ducky ducked deeper behind the backplate; now she knew what it was.

This picture was one of the later pictures I drew for "The Big Quarrel". It was finished on September 4th 2001. Both characters are freehand. Though the picture shows the scene described above the main point for me to pake it in the first place is the landscape you see in the background of the picture. I had described it at an earlier point of the story:

From the ledge she had seen that the river widened to a lake nearby and she began to seek for it. She roved a while around in the primeval forest. Again and again her way was blocked by impenetrable thicket of brushwood.
The valley ground consisted of innumerable plateaus. Most of them were not very big and the altitude difference of the bordering plateaus was rarely bigger than a meter.
Some of these plateaus were slanting and seemed to shove over other plateaus.
This strange structure of the ground was probably result from earthquakes. The trees and plants that grew here were the same like in the Great Valley. Now and then there were small glades overgrown with grass. Cera noticed that many ways were trampled through the bushes. Thus she was not alone in the valley and had to be careful.

I just meant to show how that landscape would look. I reckon in "reality" the forest must have been much thicker than in the picture, but the picture still gives a good idea on that that rugged ground with the many plateaus looked like.

[WeirdRaptor]

You've got some pretty good stuff, here, Malte. One thing I'm noticing is that you tend to make the characters longer than they actually are, though.

[Malte279]

You have a good point there WR. Whenever there are are trees in the background the characters really do seem too large (or else that would be very tiny trees). All too often the limps are too long and thin looking like they could snap any moment. I'm working on this problem, yet I'm afraid this long limp problem is one that can be ascribed to many more of my pictures.

[Malte279]

Petrie would have liked best to keep his eyes shut too when the sharptooth eyed his two victims seeming to consider which to devour first, but he couldn’t do so otherwise he would have precipitated. He stared in the depth, struck with horror. “Petrie!” a well-known voice shouted. Petrie jerked round in the air and this time he really nearly fell down. At the brink of the big ledge stood a threehorn. “Cera! You here?!” in every other circumstances Petrie would have been delighted like rarely before in his life, but he couldn’t be delighted while a few meters below a sharptooth considered which of his friends it should eat first. Cera had discerned the whole situation too and so she didn’t dwell on any sort of salutation.
“Petrie! Hinder the sharptooth! I’ll try to bring Ducky and Spike out there!” she shouted.
Petrie couldn’t breath with fright, he forgot to flap for a moment and he nearly precipitated once more. “Hi...hind...hinder? Me all alone? Thiiiiis?” stammered Petrie with high-pitched voice. But Cera couldn’t hear him anymore. She had jerked round run as fast as she could towards the descent to the dale at the end of the ravine and jumped to its ground with giant leaps using the many small ledges that towered from the wall of rock as stairs.

Not only is this a display of really poor English, but also the picture is the worst I ever made for "The Big Quarrel". Really, there is not much I can say in favor of it. The rocky ledge is way too small, the perspective is incorrect (the ledge seems to be sloping towards the viewer), Cera has (of course) too long and short legs...
This is also by drawing time the last of the pictures I did for "The Big Quarrel" (finished on October 12th 2001). Unlike all the previous pictures (colored with colored pencils) this one has been colloered with pastel crayons. Apart from the dramatic scene I reckon I also created it to give the viewer an idea of what the rather complicate arrangement of two ledges and the crack in between and all that looked like. I described it as follows:

Ali led Cera to the border of the valley. The nearer they came to the walls of rock that restricted the valley, the more plane was the ground and the fewer was the number of the plateaus. When they left the forest they stood in front of a stripe covered with grass, which separated the rocks that elevated behind the stripe, from the forest. Two big ledges that were only separated by a very narrow ravine towered from the wall of rock in front of them. It had probably been one single ledge once before, that had become split up to two pieces by an earthquake. The walls of the left ledge rose nearly perpendicularly so that it looked like a giant pillar. But the side of the other, far bigger ledge, that was turned away from the ravine was an easy gradient, so they could walk up there comfortably. From the top Cera looked down into the ravine. Near it’s entrance it was blocked by a huge boulder, so it was impossible to pass it. The ravine ended in a tiny dale that could be reached from up here by using the numerous ledges at the walls of rocks as steps inasmuch as jump down slowly from one ledge to the next lower one. From up here everything could be seen without being seen self. Even a few trees grew up on the great ledge.
It was a marvelous hiding place.

If my purpose was indeed to show the viewer what I had in mind when thinking off this location, then I must say I failed.

[Malte279]

Ali had taken the lead again. She, Littlefoot, Cera and Spike ran as fast as they could through the shallow water so it splashed up around their legs. Petrie flew aside them.
In the air he progressed far faster than his friends in the shallow water below. So Petrie took the time to cast a look back. The sharptooth had started to follow them through the lake. Suddenly Petrie noticed something that swam towards the other shore below the water surface at a high speed. Even before Ali the “something” reached the shore; it emerged and crawled out of the water. The “something” was Ducky. She shook of the water, fetched deep breath and jumped upon a small rock that stood in the shallow water near the shoreline. “Hurry up! Come on, come on, come on!” she shouted beckoning at the others without turning her look away from the sharptooth.
“Ducky!” Ali shouted with boundless relief when she reached the shore. She stopped to let the others catch up with her. “You’re back!” shouted Littlefoot and Cera lifted Ducky upon her back. Petrie landed aside Ducky. “Where you’ve been?” he asked but Ducky was still too exhausted to tell and the sharptooth who had traversed already the half of the lake wouldn’t let them the time for a narrative. Now Spike had reached the shoreline too. When he saw Ducky he smiled in a way nobody else could smile.
There was no time for more. Ali ran of again and Littlefoot, Cera and Spike didn’t budge from her side.

I posted this picture before in the Gang of Five, so when I post it again now it is mainly for the sake of completeness within this thread. It is one of my earlier drawings for this story (dating from May 25th 2001). Ducky's waving may be inspired from a scene in LBT 6 where she is waving at Littlefoot and Spike who are still on the log while the sharptooth is approaching. Yet in the movie she is shown from a different angle (and her arm is certainly not as long as it is in this picture of mine  -_- ). Nevertheless (and inspite of other shortcomings) it is one of the pictures for "The Big Quarrel" which I like better. All the characters are freehand.
Only one picture of that story left.