Oh my gosh, did it really take me a week to write this response? Sorry about that.
Hmm…no offense to Biter or your own art skills (which, as I hope I have succeeded in conveying time and again, I have unending respect for), but I think he would look better if his design were a little less like Chomper's. As soon as I saw the picture (and before I looked at the description) I started making guesses as to what kind of theropod he was supposed to be, and I automatically assumed that he must be one of the large varieties, like a carnosaur or megalosaur.
(Dang it, I wish LBT had come up with more sharptooth hatchling designs than just Chomper, “The Lonely Journey”’s
Acrocanthosaurus, and “The Great Egg Adventure”’s fast biters.
) His hands, particularly, look a bit too small, and his body and tail may be a little too bulky. I have no idea whether this would work, but perhaps you could try giving him proportions more like Ducky’s in the original LBT (I specify the first movie because her in the sequels her proportions are more “stubbified”), given that she’s a bipedal dinosaur whose design clearly indicates that she’s very young, but also gives a sense that she’s capable of quick and nimble movements (at least compared to Chomper: he tripped on his first step; Ducky chased a butterfly through a log before she was even fully out of her egg
). I’m sorry; I realize this was a fairly “doodlish” drawing that you made mainly to show the concept of a character, not a planned-out, finely detailed, labor-intensive portrait; I shouldn’t be so harsh with my critique.
I do like Biter’s colors, though. And his toothy little grin is cute. Somehow I get the impression of him being insatiably curious, with his preferred tool for examining the things he’s curious about being his mouth, and that he’s about to leap up and bite the nose of whoever’s looking at him.
(Maybe that could also be his favorite way to greet other characters…though that could cause problems with Tero… :unsure:) Have you thought about how your gang first encounters Biter? Perhaps he could be a more precocial type of sharptooth hatchling, gravitating towards a parent or group of siblings, but able to fend for himself pretty well. Rather than being constantly with the group, perhaps he could sort of shadow them, traveling alongside or behind them, but staying out of sight most of the time, so that he benefits from both the small prey that the larger dinosaurs stir up, and relative safety from the smaller, solitary sharpteeth that might otherwise threaten him, without constantly provoking the ire of a certain sharptooth-intolerant domehead. And of course he could “join” the group every now and again, if he’s looking for a warm place to sleep, seeking safety from a predator, or just feeling particularly social.
I guess if you don’t have any means of fitting this character into your stories (Gack! I just realized that there’s still a ton of fanfic and fanfic chapters of yours that I really ought to review!), then there’s no real need to use him. If you
can think of a way for him to bring some character development to Tero, though, that idea sounds great! I do think this character has potential, though it might also be good to not introduce him to your gang right away; better to have plenty of time to explore and develop the relationships between the main five characters before throwing a baby sharptooth into the mix.
I have NO idea what species he's supposed to be. He's the same type of sharptooth as those that made a brief cameo in the beginning of LBT 4. They looked kinda like the raptors that also appeared in the same movie's intro hunting a ceratopsian, but they had stripes, was a darker tone of blue, and a close look showed they lacked a 'killer claw' on their feet. So they were some other small, pack-hunting predator... *shrugs*
Hmm…Yeah, I know the dinosaurs you’re talking about. For some reason, whenever I looked at those little guys, I always thought “
Saltopus”, probably because of the way they were bounding across the river in that scene (
Saltopus means “leaping foot”).
Saltopus isn’t considered to be a true dinosaur anymore, though, and even if it was, neither it nor any small theropod I can think of had ashort, blunt, blocky snouts. No small theropod that I can think of off the top of my head had those proportions. Honestly, even I don’t know what those little guys were supposed to be.
*checks his trusty copy of
The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals ©1988*
Well, the best guess I can come up with is
Coelurus (a dinosaur you hardly ever hear about nowadays, which is probably why I didn’t think of it before), which was often illustrated with a rather short, blunt skull. It was lankier than our mystery sharpteeth, but the picture in my book does look vaguely similar to them. It has also occurred to me that my IDing of those sharpteeth may have been thrown off because I have always had the impression that they were extremely tiny, seeing as they were dwarfed by a
Brachiosaurus’s head. But now that I think about it, LBT III has clear signs of being influenced by
Jurassic Park (namely, the
Velociraptor in the climax), and the head of the
Brachiosaurus that interacted with the human characters in that film (you know, the one who demonstrated the power of sauropod sinuses?
) was pretty gigantic in relation to them. So my initial concern that the six-foot
Coelurus was too large to be a candidate for those mystery sharpteeth’s identity may be unfounded. (And let’s face it, LBT has seldom bothered much with scaling its dinosaurs accurately.
)
Those little sharpteeth also make me think of “
Syntarsus” (later renamed
Megapnosaurus, now apparently considered by some to be a species of
Coelophysis 
), a theropod that was once popular to illustrate with a jaunty crest of feathers on the nape of its neck. Its proportions, however, were completely different.
For the record, I identified the raptors in the following scene as
Deinonychus and the ceratopsian as either a
Pentaceratops, or a
Chasmosaurus with inaccurately shaped brow horns. (Incidentally, those raptors are the basis for one of the characters in my own group of “gang substitute” OCs.
)
Ooooo! I saw an owl a few days ago!! It was like 5 in the morning, I was sitting on a bus-stop bench when this beautiful barn owl flew by, probably about 10 feet in front of me! It was soooooo friggin' AWESOME!!
Cooool.
I've got a couple of neat owl stories myself. Remind me to tell them to you sometime.
I do have an old sketch of Cookie, you know back when I was making my character's debut pictures. But I never finished it (outlining and coloring has yet to be done), and even if I do finish, it isn't very well-drawn and my confidence in the pic is pretty low. :unsure:
It's okay, you don't have to share it.
I’m just curious to see more pictures of Cookie, since she’s the least drawn of all your characters.
And you can definitely count on me doing that cookie jar picture! Even if I suck at drawing Swimmers, it's just too cute to pass up on! Epecially since that star-day card is such an inspiration!
Yeah, I agree, LBT-style hadrosaurs are tricky to draw. And I’m glad that little drawing I made of Cookie was so inspiring. I’m looking forward to seeing your take on the “Cookie discovers cookies” theme.
O....m....g.... I HAVE to draw that!! It's up there with my still-in-the-making group zoo picture! In fact, I'mma start on it now! I especially wanna do Tero with a bowl on his head and I can already see how I'm gonna do Cookie's expression! And an apron sounds genius!!
Awesome! Can't wait to see it.
........................ Yeah, okay. I'll admit it, I had to look up what "equidistant" means. 
But I can still understand what you're saying! I don't really have access to a protractor (I believe that's what the measuring-angles tool is called; please correct me if I'm wrong!) but I think I can measure the angles via the naked eye now that I know what I'm looking for! 
*checks Google* Yep, a protractor is the right name of the tool you’re thinking of.
I meant picture #2, but you do bring up a good point. If only they showed a perching archie in the LBT, then it'd be a bit easier for me! I bet Teryx would look adorable with his wings folded to his side.
Well, I do have
these three screenshots showing one of the green
Archaeopteryx from LBT VII perching. Personally I don’t think it’s a very good reference, though: the right wing is a much brighter shade of green than the left,
the feather detail is mostly simple fuzz and there is virtually no detail of the flight feathers, and the foot looks more like a tree-climbing lizard’s. You could probably come up with a much better design for Teryx perching with his wings folded by yourself. I found
a tutorial on how to draw folded bird wings, if that helps (be sure to read all the text!).
Hmm…here’s a thought: Recently I came up with an incredibly silly and random idea for a picture of Teryx and Tero. Rather than suggesting it as an addition to your already long list of picture ideas you have for those two, what if I took a crack at drawing it myself, and in the process, demonstrated my idea for Teryx’s folded wing design?
O-kee do-kee…my initial response to the second picture:
“Wow… Wow… Wow, that is
good!”
Honestly, I don’t think
I’ve ever drawn an
Archaeopteryx that accurately (though admittedly I haven’t made many attempts at drawing super-accurate dinosaurs, and I don’t recall
Archaeopteryx ever being one of them).
The feather detail on this is seriously amazing. I particularly love how you did the feathers around and underneath his hand; it’s hard to put it in words, but there’s something especially realistic-looking about them. The tail feathers don’t end too early, or taper excessively towards the base. His leg is almost entirely hidden above the knee, but you have those little delineations of fluff showing that the leg is still there. All of these details set this picture above
a lot of
Archaeopteryx drawings you can find on the Web.
You also did a nice job making Teryx expressive despite his realistic design. His eye in particular makes him look intent and stealthy, and I even get a sense that he’s ready to shut it the instant he hits his prey, so that his eyes aren’t damaged in the subsequent struggle. I also love the little patches of pluffed-out feathers on his chest, shoulders, and knee. For such a relatively simple picture (as in, not an ultra-realistic, John-James-Audubon-esque painting with a million layers and every detail accounted for) you did astoundingly well making his feathers look dynamic, like they’re shifting and ruffling with his movements.
And OOOOOOOO!! I think I really am getting better at drawing birds! Sure, I still see mistakes (like I know I screwed up on the leg-feathers, but since Teryx really doesn't use them for powered flight, I guess it can be excuse-able ), but it still came out a whole lot better than I expected!
Actually the leg-wings look really good. I dunno, maybe the feathers closest to the ankle joint should be projecting further outwards to form more of a winglike point, but I don’t know for sure. Honestly, I think the guy who wrote that blog article about common mistakes in drawing
Archaeopteryx would tell you that this is a lot more accurate than 90% of the non-scientific archie artwork out there.
As far as potential improvements, I would make his neck a bit thicker and fluffier, with straighter lines (especially on the underside of his throat). His toes look a little short, although it may simply be that the divisions between them do not extend far back enough. The length and shape of his snout might be slightly off, but I myself am so unclear on the correct shape of
Archaeopteryx’s skull that I couldn’t tell you how so. I can say that the lines forming the inside of his mouth (both on the upper and lower jaw) are perhaps a bit too straight.
Finally, a note on the teeth that applies to pretty much all theropods: Surprisingly enough, those teeth shouldn’t extend that far back in the mouth. Turns out, when you look at a theropod skull, whether it be an
Archaeopteryx, a
Deinonychus, a
Tyrannosaurus, an
Allosaurus, a
Baryonyx, or a
Carnotaurus, the last third or so of the mouth is empty of teeth. In a life restoration, most of that last third is usually covered by the soft tissue that forms the cheek (or at least that pink cheeklike membrane in the corner of the mouth), but as a rule it seems that no theropod has teeth directly under its eye socket; the tooth line always ends in front of the eyes. (It also seems that the upper teeth usually extend slightly further back than the lower teeth.) This is yet another mistake I’m sure I’ve been making for a long time, and a good one to keep in mind when drawing theropods.
Oh, riiiiiight…One more thing about
Archaeopteryx that I completely forgot to mention before:
Apparently it’s believed that
Archaeopteryx couldn’t raise its wings above the level of its back (and as a result it could only flap its wings downward, not upward, so it may have been more of a flap-assisted glider than a true flier). Sorry, my bad.
But what the heck: this picture is so awesome that I don’t care if Teryx shouldn’t be able to adopt this pose in reality.
You know...this is my first time thinking about it and I dunno why I haven't brought it up before when I'm emphasizing Tero's hate for sharpteeth and Teryx being a mini sharptooth but... yeah, it's probably behaviors like this that contributes Tero's hatred for Teryx. Aside from the fact that their personalities are far less than compatible, Tero knows Teryx is a sharptooth whose size is the only thing keeping him from being a real threat worthy of being chased off and/or killed. But what if Teryx were to come across a newly-hatched baby Leaf Eater? Fortunately, Teryx isn't interested in hatchlings as food.
Huh. Funny how well that works out.
Squeeeeeee!! I still can't believe how well this turned out!! Thank you so much, Pangy!! Those pics you showed me and the tips you supplied were a HUGE help!! I have no doubt this pic would've turned up having a LOT more anatomical inaccuracies if it wasn't for you! *glomps*
Aww, you’re welcome.
I’m really happy to have helped you make such a terrific picture. Still, I may have given you pointers and recommended resources, but you’re the one who studied and interpreted these references to make this outstanding art piece. Well done.
EDIT: Holy crimony this is a bleepin' long post. :blink:
