Aaron Doyle's Dinosaur art

[Battle_Brak]

I have loved dinosaurs for as long as I can remember. Like 80s toys, and video games it's something I never "grew out of." My first job out of college was modeling dinosaurs for an interactive museum exhibit, and although it is nearly impossible to make a living creating paleo-art I still sculpt and paint dinos whenever I can find time.



This is a Psittacosaurus model I was commissioned to sculpt. Psittacosaurus was a small primitive relative of dinosaurs like Triceratops. It's not the most impressive dinosaur with the largest species, Psittacosaurus mongoliensis, only about the size of a large dog. It is, however, one of the best known dinosaurs. Hundreds of nearly complete specimens are known from China. One specimen recovered in the past decade is beautifully preserved with nearly all the skin and the bizarre quill structures on the tail. This sculpt isn't completely accurate on that front, but I'm updating it currently to reflect the newest research.

[Guest]

I recently watched a short documentary on dinosaur species being misrepresented. According to recent findings, a large number of recorded species could have actually been juveniles of the same animals, that as they mature (like modern birds) dramatically change in appearance, resulting in an exaggerated number of species.

It was quite interesting, much like your comission.

[Battle_Brak]

That was an interesting documentary. I'm not sure how well Horner's hypothesis regarding radically different growth stages holds up. In regard to certain species like Dracorex/ Stygimoloch/ Pachycephalosaurus it seems plausible. Others like Triceratops to Torosaurus don't make much sense. For example the adult Torosaurus specimens we have are smaller than the adult Triceratops specimens we have, yet Horner claims that Triceratops is a juvenile Torosaurus. Also Triceratops seems to have a specially adapted frill with thickened bone which clearly serves an important purpose since it is not a common trait amongst ceratopsians. It seems odd that it would lose that later in life.




Speaking of ceratopsians with strange frills... here is my Styracosaurus sculpt.

[Mechanizor]

Wonderful stuff.

[MIDOR]

Nice.

Is this a computer model or something physical?

[Mechanizor]

It's CG...

[MIDOR]

Thanks.

I thought so but I wanted to be sure.

It's CG...

[Battle_Brak]

It's actually a bit of both. While the models are sculpted digitally they are 3D printed to make physical scale models.

For example, the Yutyrannus I sculpted. Here is a screenshot of the digital sculpt:



And here is a physical model of it painted by Noora Kivisilta:

[Battle_Brak]

Here is a painting I did of Anzu wyliei back before it was described and named. At the time many assumed it to be a species of Chirostenotes, but it turns out it was quite unique. A friend of mine actually bought a direct casting of the neck and head of this animal at an auction and I used those as reference.

[Guest]

Is there a purple Tyrantisaurus on the way?

[Battle_Brak]

Nothing like that in the works I'm afraid. I am currently working on creating a 6th scale resin kit of Velociraptor though.