Well, that was 2019

Don't know if I've let it show but it's been a hard year to get through, so I'm just glad to get to the end of it, not that a change of date magically changes the reasons.

[content warning: pet death, pet neglect, sad and depressing post because I'm sad and depressed, but figured I'd write it anyway]

Front page layout update

Featuring worried sharks.

Baby fights

When it comes to fan depictions of Blue and Echo's big fight that got big enough it left Echo with permanent marks, I usually see it set in when both raptors already look just as they do in their first appearance in Jurassic World (apart from Echo's scar and misaligned jaw). As much as the raptors are probably still very young adults in that movie, though, I wonder if they actually were nearly even that old at the time.

2019 art summary

Lots of raptors, cuddling and otherwise. Also ladies in love with ladies, and lady raptors in love and cuddling with lady raptors. A few cats. Sounds about right.

I didn't write nearly as much this year as the last one, apart from comics, but I'm still really happy with the one fanfic I did write. About raptors, of course. It went from a blog post wondering about what might have happened after Jurassic Park to writing a dramatization of said wonderings, to liking the characters enough I've drawn them a bunch of times and by the end of the year made custom toy figures of them.

I'm also really happy about how much I've learned this year about actual raptors outside Jurassic Park/World, from real life science on deinonychosaurs to how to draw them feathered and otherwise more accurate, and also learning more about present-day birds in general and avian raptors in particular. While the number of my scaly raptor OCs has increased quite a bit over the year, my first one has also gone from vaguely scaly-looking to fully feathered.

Blank template for the graphic is by yorunaka at deviantart

Eaglet cuteness

Happened to check the Southwest Florida eagle cam just in time for a closeup of little 2-day-old E14 peeking out from under mom, so I took a few screenshots.

Live camera: site, youtube

Eyeing again

And Triptail is done! I think she turned out quite cute if I do say so myself.

I should have photos of the whole pack ready to post sometime before the end of the month (year. decade! wow, it's really been another one of those already, hasn't it).

Avian raptor nest going-ons

If you've been following what I've been drawing lately you'll know raptor nesting is the theme at the moment. But I'm also keeping an eye on a few non-Jurassic World, non-deinonychosaur raptor nests. Interesting stuff, if you find observing dinosaurs interesting, which I do.

And I'm happy to bring the news that one of these nests is beginning to hatch their babies of this season right this moment! The first chick may take a day to get out of the egg entirely, but the shell has cracked, with a tiny beak peeking through. The other egg is a few days younger, and is expected to hatch a bit later. Congratulations and lots of luck to bald eagle couple Harriet and M15 of Southwest Florida!

Live feed of the nest can be viewed here.

Other bald eagle nests I'm following include:

Jackie and Shadow of Big Bear. No eggs yet this season, but that's not out of schedule considering the difference in location to the Florida nest, and the couple has been getting the nest ready for a while now.

Starr, Valor I, and Valor II of Upper Mississippi River. A trio instead of duo, consisting of one female and two males, all nesting together.

A fair warning for viewing the nest cams, as they do capture both good times and bad in the lives of wild animals. Also, bald eagle chicks (and many raptor chicks in general) can exhibit rather intense sibling rivalry in their early days, and while not out of the ordinary it can be hard to watch. And of course these are carnivorous birds, so expect to regularly see dead animals as food in the nest.

Most of what you'll see will probably not be too gruesome, though. Before any eggs have been laid you're also still likely to catch the nest empty even during the breeding season, with the adults being away fetching material or perching in nearby trees instead. Other than that, it'll probably mostly be along the lines of birbs arranging sticks; brooding eggs and then chicks; putting sticks on their brooding mate who's forgotten to let the other parent have a turn at brooding, too, so they'll get up already (okay that was like one time, but it was funny); and tiny, fluffy hatchlings struggling to hold their big head up and then continuing to look endearingly awkward and completely unmajestic thoughout their childhood.

Lady Hawk at youtube, among other channels, has an excellent archive of this and past seasons of many raptor nests of a variety of species, including the ones mentioned above.

Frightful

All the better to chomp you with

Triptail's mouth and claws are done. She had a bit of white paint on her tongue, not enough of it on some of her teeth, and the gums on the top jaw were green at the front, but that should be fixed now.

I gave her stripes a light purple-red wash, and added some green-ish to her underbelly, especially around the throat, since the JP1 figures have that, too. Hers is more yellow-green while their green is more bluish, though.

The eyes got a base coat of white, to bring out the colours better so they stand out against the dark markings around them. They're painted a little over where the eye is sculpted, and I hope the contrast helps in masking that.

Bonus long Masu:

Green raptor erasure

This is now, what? The third green raptor I've repainted to be brown? Also this figure just can't decide what shade of brown she is because all of these photos were taken in different lightings.

Anyway, Triptail is approaching the finish line. I'll still tint her markings a bit, and then it's just details like claws and eyes. Also touch-ups to the paint in her mouth, since there are some stains and scuffs in that. The claws are mostly painted, too, but the factory paint was already a bit spotty in some places and I didn't pay much mind to painting over them while changing the base colour, since they're pretty easy to just repaint black all nice and neat once everything else is done.

Showing up to the repainting 15 minutes late with raptor beverage

The last one of the figures I'm painting into my raptor OC pack (led by one (1) technically-canon character) has arrived. The Papo raptor figure is kind of ubiquitous, but I didn't have one before, and it does match the JP/W figures well in size and proportions.

I'm not a big fan of the tripod pose, though to be fair the tip of the tail doesn't quite touch the ground and the figure does actually stand just on the two legs. The raptor OC I'm making this one into is Triptail, so perhaps she is in the process of living up to her name and tripping someone up with her tail. That at least is her preferred meaning for her name, but she has also been known to perform feats of clumsiness on par with tripping on one's own tail (which a raptor would probably not be able to do very easily, theropod tails are not that floppy).

The face is nice, but I think she kind of has the opposite problem from her sister Whirlwind, whom I just finished making from that Fujimi kit. The eyes are small compared to the JP/W figures. We'll see if I'll do something about that. I'm already going to paint over her eyes anyway, since the character has green eyes.

(Yes, that is the same figure, just at a window mostly illuminated by the limited natural light Finland gets in December, and under a lamp, respectively.)

Happy Friday the 13th

Since it happens I'm currently sharing my home with a black cat.

 It's Masu.

Who would win?

I don't know, why are they fighting? What's at stake? Where are they fighting? Why are they both there? How much are they allowed to use their environment to their advantage? If not at all, isn't it unfair on a fighter whose strength is adapting to their surroundings? Are there others present as possible collateral damage one or both of them may or may not care about? Can they walk away from the fight or are they forced to battle to the death? Who's forcing them and why? Is it to the death or until one gives up? Can they take breaks or is there a time limit? If the fighters are beings capable of using tools and weapons, are they allowed to use them, and what kind? Can they ask for backup? Inspiring loyalty and making allies is a highly useful survival skill - if it's a strength of one of the fighters, are they allowed to utilize it? If not, what's preventing them? Can they use it on their opponent and convince them not to fight? Can they team up against whoever's making them fight? Can they just sit and chat instead of fighting if that would be more in-character?

This is why I'm bad at these.

I have received rexes!

My awesome friend sent me these beautiful stamps featuring Tyrannosaurus rex.

Two of the designs are holographic. One shows a rex walking in the viewer’s general direction, and then coming directly at the viewer with its mouth open and ready to chomp when you look at it from a different angle. Another shows a rex apparently assessing a baby Triceratops for a possible meal, and both of them turn into skeletons when you turn the stamp. Another has a juvenile rex hunting a prehistoric mammal, and last but the opposite of the least - a feathered rex hatchling!

I love them! Thank you so much!

My own rexes in all their outdated anatomy are put to shame by these, lol. To help their case, they brought along to admire the stamps the feathered, basal tyrannosauroid Dilong.

Some snows

What are Indoraptors?

[warning for discussion of animal abuse, and spoilers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom]

Originally posted to tumblr as three separate posts in 2018 and early 2019, reposted here to archive posts I want to keep... and now reposted again because I accidentally deleted it.

Finishing touches, finally

Adding pupils,

 attaching legs,

...and here she is!

Spottier

Purply spots!

 And darker outlines to the purply.

Our raptor is starting to be done (hopefully, anyway)! She's getting her legs back once this latest addition dries, and then it should be just eye details. And possibly touching up any paint I chip by popping the legs in. Acrylic sticks to her plastic okay, but it scratches off more easily than on the other figures I've painted. Those other figures are all made of at least a little softer plastic, while this raptor needs to be made of hard plastic to maintain the shape, since the model is hollow, and needs to have the parts line up when put together. She's survived just fine getting dropped a few times, though.

Spotty

Whirlwind has the beginnings of her patterns, and her new base colour. The insides of those spots are going to be darker than the base colour, but I didn't paint over those areas because the base colour is a bit yellowy, while I want the spots to be a bit purply, and those being complementary colours it may turn out cleaner this way.

I also gave her eyes a gradient from darker and bluer green to lighter and yellower. Since she's got big eyes, might as well make them fancy. I'll still shape and resize them with more dark brown around the edges, though, before adding the pupils. She'll have dark blotches around her eyes, so hopefully the brown on the "eyeballs" blends in a bit.

Her patterns are based on the tribe B raptors from Trespasser, just in shades of brown instead of the pretty goldfish colours seen in the game, because she's female. Apparently during Trespasser's events all the lady raptors were elsewhere, perhaps doing something more productive than chasing humans by walking, and falling off cliffs.

I did get to just the painting

Whirlwind is getting nice and brown, and has left the lantern only to sit in my brush holder instead, as she and her legs are yet to reunite. I put them back on temporarily, though, just to check that the putty on her neck didn't make her too front-heavy to stand (being heavier than the plastic is, though still pretty light), which it turns out it didn't. I think I'll keep them separate until she's at least almost done. The patterns in that area should turn out neater that way.

She's got ~1½-2 coats of the light brown paint I used for the base colour of the JP1 raptor babies, but the base colour I want her to have is a little darker and brighter. This paint is just more opaque and easier to cover up the green with than jumping straight to that colour would have been.

The tail does still move, but I prefer it in this position, so if the next coat makes the paint thick enough it won't anymore, that's not a big loss.

Frost flowers

Ok NOW can I get to just the painting?

Well, not quite right now because she'll need her neck seam to cure for the day, but hopefully that's the last of the sculpting she'll need. I don't know if the head support I slapped together for her is necessary, but just in case her head starts falling over before the putty is hardened enough. All her parts are really light though, being hollow plastic, so it probably wouldn't.

Her legs are off since they're easier to paint separately for at least the first coat, and she's sitting on that tealight lantern thingy instead of lying on her side, which might make steadying her head easier, because I also sealed the seam on her back. It wasn't a huge gap, but, since I could. I also just now noticed her tail is poseable at the base, too, and can move up quite a bit. This shouldn't ruin that, but we'll see once the putty's cured.

I made the head turned to one side a bit, which I think looks livelier than having her look straight forward. Little raptor who's joining her on the drying shelf agrees - and is finished now except for the drying.

Here's a before and after of what I did about the little raptor's mouth. I didn't repaint that part completely, but the paint on the teeth was pretty uneven, most obvious when seen directly from the front. Also the tongue was the only part with pink on it.