Exhale: 2012

Monday, 26 November 2012

Character Design: The Dinosaur Relation

Each of my characters, at one point, are dinosaurs. Therefore, here is a list of the dinosaurs that inspired the characters:

The Villain: The Dinosaur Queen:

Falcarius utahensis

I chose this dinosaur as a starting point because it had feathers and looked rather elegant. As I wanted my 'Queen' to have some form of hair or plumage, I went for the Falcarius Utahensis.Also, for the 'robe' of the queen, I required her to have wings. As a result, the Pterodactyl came into use.

Falcarius utahensis is the living image of a vicious meat eater trying to go vegetarian. Scientists aren't sure if the bird-like relative of Velociraptor had fully kicked its taste for flesh, but its meat-cutting teeth had shrunk to leaf-cutting size and its gut had expanded sufficiently to ferment plants.
Falcarius walked on two legs and stood about 4.5 feet tall. Head to tail, it was about 13 feet long and wielded sharp, curved, four-inch long claws — perhaps to grab a bite when it fell off the wagon? The dinosaur lived during the Early Cretaceous, about 125 million years ago, in what is today Utah.

Pterodactylus

Pterodactylus was a comparatively small pterosaur, with an estimated adult wingspan of about 5 feet (1.5 meters). There was some confusion early on as to the size of the Pterodactylus, as some of the specimens turned out to be juveniles rather than adults.
Pterosaurs had long necks covered in long, bristle-like structures with throat pouches extending from about the middle of the lower jaw to the upper part of the neck. Their skulls were long and narrow and contained about 90 large, conical teeth. The teeth extended back from the tips of both jaws, and became smaller farther away from the jaw tips. The teeth were long and slender, giving rise to the theory that they were used as tools for straining.
A distinguishing feature of pterosaurs was the crest on their heads. The crest was composed mainly of soft tissues and was covered in scales.

The Sidekick: The Queen's Minion:

The Queen's Minion is meant to be a subspecies of the dinosaurs. They are used as beasts of burden and as, well, minions.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex fit the bill perfectly. As a result, I used him.

Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs that ever lived. Everything about this ferocious predator, from its thick, heavy skull to its 4-foot-long (1.2-meter-long) jaw, was designed for maximum bone-crushing action.
Fossil evidence shows that Tyrannosaurus was about 40 feet (12 meters) long and about 15 to 20 feet (4.6 to 6 meters) tall. Its strong thighs and long, powerful tail helped it move quickly, and its massive 5-foot-long (1.5-meter-long) skull could bore into prey.

The Hero: The Human Who Becomes Part-Dinosaur:

Gryposaurus

The hero needs to be gentle and likeable. The design that I drew up earlier made him look to ugly to be a hero. As a result, I looked up some gentle dinosaurs and used the Xenotarsosaurus and the Gryposaurus as starting points for my Hero.

Xenotarsosaurus

Gryposaurus: It lived in North America. It lived in the Cretaceous period. It was approximately 26 feet long. It was an herbivore and bipedal and was native to North America.

Xenotarsosaurus : It lived in the Cretaceous period. It was a carnivore and bipedal.

Information from:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/prehistoric/tyrannosaurus-rex/

http://pikimal.com/dinosaur/xenotarsosaurus/for/gentle

http://www.livescience.com/24071-pterodactyl-pteranodon-flying-dinosaurs.html