THE PALEO KING

Compliments! An excellent picture. Just waiting for the ultimate version. I've read all the previous comments on skinny sauropods & Sibbick et alii, and now I agree with the "dry season" scenario.

Leo

Wow!! Dat lookin' good!

BTW, how did you know my sketch was traced?

Just because it's identical to a figure in one of Greg Paul's articles and it's obviously on tracing paper, that means it's traced??? Logic please????

LOL!

Lol I knew it was probably traced because of the feverish quality of the lines especially on the ilia.... plus the bones are all identical to Paul's skeletal's bones, but not QUITE identical to each other.... they look a bit rushed, the edges look slightly different and hasty, as if traced off a printed copy of Paul's figure.

No problem though, it's just a sketch and I know you're not trying to pass it off as your own work LOL! I got my start by tracing too, several years back, but like any respectable artist, I don't post up that stuff as my own original work or infringe others' copyrights.

Actually, that was a joke, because it's just so obvious that I traced it.

And yes, "artists" like Josef Moravec who do nothing but copy others' work and pass it off as their own ORIGINAL work bug me big time... I mean, does Moravec think that because Burian is dead, he can get away with blatantly copying his paintings? Does he think that no one in the paleo-art community will recognize that his paintings are just lazy rip-offs of Burian's work? Anyway...

I noticed that the hind legs of the Omeisaurus in the center look a bit thicker (and more to my liking...), did you change them? Or is it just an illusion caused by the image becoming more and more detailed?

Either way, it looks great.

I changed them just a tiny bit ;)

But not full-on Bakkerian style. Realistically, I think the previous version was too thin for even the bones!

But in a miniature it's hard to get everything just right... I use 0.5 mechanical pencil for this, anything else just won't cut it.

Wow! You've made so much progress on this since the last time I looked.

This is going to be so beautiful once you finish it.

This is going to end up great. Those Omeisaurus ended up beautifully. Great work, as always!

Here's a couple of Mamenchisaurus illustrations by italian paleoartist Marco Auditore:

http://www.studiotsunami.it/minmi/colli.jpg

http://www.studiotsunami.it/minmi/altri%20dini/Mamenchisaurus.jpg

Hope you'll find them interesting.

Leo

Thanks, Leo! I've seen the skeletal before but it's great to have the permanent link!

Marco's Mamenchisaurus skeletal is amazing, though both his an Scott Hartman's are lacking something. Marco gets the dorsal curve right, but forgets the upward "kink" in the base of the tail which Hartman includes. As a result in Marco's skeletal the tail is too close to the ground.

Both of them also hang the neck too low. But that can easily be fixed. Overall I like Greg Paul's skeletals best, but I don't have the one for Mamenchisaurus. (I have his Omeisaurus in two versions, but both are too big for most scanners!)

Marco's drawing of the two Mamenchisaurs is amazing though. Really provides food for thought!

''Both of them also hang the neck too low. But that can easily be fixed.''

I don't really agree with that, It sounds like they are factually wrong or somthing.

Hartmans ''M.youngi'' has the neck the the neutral pose.

I personally prefer it when skeletals are posed in neutral pose. It provides a good starting point for artists. They can then go off and decide how they are going to portray the neck. It also provides an interesting comparison point between different sauropods. (I'm not saying I think they walked around all the time in neutral pose. If Taylor et al are right then probably not much at all.)

I would love to know for example what the neutral pose is for M.hochuanensis, but I just can't really tell with Pauls version.

The image is comming along nicely by the way!

Nima, I've got Greg Paul's Mamenchisaurus skeletal if you're interested.

I am indeed interested. Send it over!

*drools* ....lol I bet it rocks. But is it the old one or the new slant-necked one?