a comic about space and dinosaurs.
are we sure sedna isn’t related to the girl from ‘the ring’?
once again, pteranodon is not a dinosaur. you might think that pterosaurs are essentially “dinosaur birds”, but not only are they not dinosaurs, actual birds are dinosaurs. so “dinosaur birds” are literally just birds. if anything birds are “dinosaur pterosaurs”.
also, the “pterodactl” is an incorrect name for pterosaurs and technically not a real thing. there is a genus of pterosaur called “pterodactylus” which was the first pterosaur discovered (~1784), but it was about the size of a small goose and not the giant terror of the skies you were probably imagining. pteranodon here was a proper large and scary bugger, but still not the biggest pterosaur (we’ll get to that one eventually).
(i got mosasaurus and mesosaurus confused more times than i care to admit while writing this comic)
so i’m gonna be that guy and remind you that mosasaurus is not technically a dinosaur. it’s a reptile. just because something’s big and died 66 million years ago doesn’t make it a dinosaur. still, that doesn’t make it any less cool. it’s like a cross between an eel and a crocodile, and three great white sharks long.
hopefully one day in the distant future humanity will successfully bring back both the mosasaurus and the megalodon and organise the fight of the century. would it be neccessary? no. would you watch it? yes.
ankylosaurus is essentially the super-heavy tank of the dinosaur world. everyone wants to either ride one or watch it pummel a t-rex in the face with its club.
also just to confuse you a little, ankylosaurus is a genus within the family ‘ankylosauridae’ (members are called ankylosaurids), which is within the suborder ‘ankylosauria’ (members are called ankylosaurs). got all that? good. there will be a test later so don’t you dare forget it.
ankylosaurs are a diverse group of armoured dinosaurs, many of which don’t have a club on the end of their tail (e.g. nodosaurus). it just happens that our clubbed boy ankylosaurus was discovered first (in 1906), so both the family and the suborder got stuck with the name.
so i actually read the entirety of ‘the time machine’ as research for this coming series of comics, which ended up being mostly unnecessary but it was a good book so i can’t complain.
some might think h. g. wells was being bleak and pessimistic when he described a future earth 800,000 years from now where humanity has evolved into two degenerate races (one of which regularly eats the other), but personally i think it was optimistic of him to suggest humanity would survive for that long at all.
on the other hand, he thought the sun would go dim and cold in a few million years, but actually we have billions of years until that happens. so that’s a nice thought, i guess.
apparently i’m now committed to using this comic format at least once for every character. at first i thought i was being super original until i reread scott pilgrim and realised it was doing the whole “name, x years old, random description” schtick way back in 2004. :(
(click here for a high resolution version of this illustration)
illustration day mates. this one’s inspired by the book ‘the time machine’ written in 1895 by h. g. wells. of course, in the book the time traveller goes 800,000 years into the future, not 66 million years into the past, but in this version dini is the time traveller so what else would you expect?
i hate this illustration. it’s so complicated i procrastinated on it for months because i wasn’t confident i could do it. then when the deadline was getting close i spent day after day drawing, redrawing, tweaking, and redrawing again, trying to get it to work. i’m still not 100% happy with it but i’m gonna stop here so i can have my life back.
aww, yuri thought ako had replaced her.
wait! i think i just accidentally made a cute and weird version of toy story.
i love drawing ako. she’s about 50 million times easier to draw than actual mars rovers (no offense percy, but you’re just so stupidly complicated).
hey, does anyone else feel an unbearable urge to go watch wall-e for some reason, or just me…?
if the movie cast away taught me anything, it’s that you can totally have a non-living character who’s entire personality is projected on them by someone else. so i’m making it a personal challenge to get at least one person to decide ako is their favourite character, without ever bringing her to life.
that and to eventually make toy akos. i really want a toy ako.
great scott! it’s a 5-panel comic! is that even legal?
the history of mars rovers is way too interesting to compress into one tiny comic strip (and yet i tried anyway), so i hope you all go on a wikipedia/youtube binge to learn all the juicy details. the fact that we humans have put multiple science vehicles on another freaking planet is absolutely ridiculous, and i hope we can eventually one-up ourselves and land actual people on mars, ideally some time within the next 2-3 million years. [glares at nasa]
also, i’m officially sick of drawing rovers now. they are actually the worst.
