Lucan and his shiny Dedenne “BonBon”.

I just love crossovers and AUs with OCs so much.

David Armsby’s ‘Old Buck’: A Review

So by now most of you are probably aware of the short film Old Buck by David Armsby (AKA Dead Sound) that came out today and has singlehanded become one of the best pieces of dinosaur media I have ever seen in my life. I haven’t really done a review-format-type-thing before but this really make me want to give it a shot. So, in advance, my short review is that this film is absolutely incredible, and you should all go and watch it a million times over like I have. Now, to say that in a much more long-winded way!

I’ve been a fan of Dead Sound for years, ever since I was introduced to his first dinosaur short Sharp Teeth, which is the precursor to this series in a lot of ways. I’m also a huge fan of his Autodale series, set in a dark retrofuturistic dystopian world, that slowly uncovers the mechanisms behind why the world is the way it is and who is secretly pulling the strings.

Old Buck tonally and visually feels like a direct successor to Sharp Teeth, exploring similar themes and being presented in a similar way, but as great as Sharp Teeth is I feel like Old Buck is in every way more mature and superior to its predecessor.

Visually the film is absolutely spectacular. I’m always a complete sucker for a limited colour palette and the blues and greys and pinks that Armsby has chosen are stunning. Trans Rights Styracosaurus is beautiful and I love it. His modelling and texturing of the animals has gotten more and more detailed over the years he’s been making films, but they still retain a lovely simplicity and stylisation that works fantastically with the unshaded flat coloured style.

The dinosaurs are, simply put, absolutely top notch. These are unreservedly the best dinosaurs I have ever seen on film. The protagonist Old Buck is absolutely overflowing with character without ever being overly anthropomorphised, with the broken horn, plant-matted horns and scars making him feel old and weathered and worn but still full of strength and steel. 

I genuinely tried to come up with enough nitpicks to fill a paragraph in this review and I do not have enough! That is just how well Armsby has done his research, and while there’s a couple things I personally might have done differently that is 100% an art style thing, and has nothing to do with accuracy or scientific validity. Just,,, wow these dinosaurs are so good.

There’s also some wonderful variation between members of the same species in the Styracosaurus, with different arrangements and forms of horn and different colour patterns, which must have been so much extra work to put in but it’s so worth it. It makes them feel like a group of individual and varied animals.

The way that the dinosaurs are treated within the frame of the story is fantastic too, and it’s one of my favourite things about Armsby’s work in general. He often includes running themes of nature being neither benevolent nor malevolent, that there are no heroes or villains in nature, simply animals trying to survive. The Old Buck is our protagonist, but he is not the Hero. The rival male is the antagonist who opposes the Old Buck, but he is not the Villain, nor are the Daspletosaurus that watch from the sidelines.

Another thing I absolutely love is the decision to not have any narration. Sharp Teeth had a poem as narration, and while that poem is great I think removing any narration for Old Buck was absolutely the right choice to make. It lets the visual storytelling stand on its own, and that visual storytelling is lovely. I particularly like the part where the rival male uses the same move on his first opponent and on the Old Buck, but when he attempts to use it a third time Old Buck has learned from it and changes his strategy, turning the tide of the fight. That’s the kind of thing that could have been made blatantly obvious with narration, but the visuals are strong enough that they do not need it and the film is absolutely better for that!

Speaking of visuals, I’m just gonna end this review off with some of the absolutely stunning cinematography and composition in this short because if me gushing about it for 700 words hasn’t convinced you to watch it then you should at least see how insanely pretty this film is. This was all made by one person by the way.

So yeah, this is an absolutely stunning and beautiful outing for David Armsby’s Dinosauria series. Everything about it is such a breath of fresh air that dinosaur media desperately needs, and I am beyond hyped for the next instalment!

Bringing this back to say that Dead Sound has just dropped a behind-the-scenes video discussing the making of Old Buck and it is genuinely a work of art:

The amount of love and care and detail that this man puts into these films cannot be understated, with so many references to palaeontological specimens that I didn’t even catch!

He mentions at the end that he personally feels like the end result is too dramatised, and while I will respectfully disagree and say that I think it’s still absolutely fantastic, that does make me incredibly excited for even more naturalistic-feeling dinosaurs from him in the future. There are going to be five shorts in total in this series and I definitely plan on reviewing each one of them as they come out. This series is so refreshing and wonderful and I cannot wait to see what Armsby does next!

Portals to Hell by hrmphfft

IT’S BACK

I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO FIND THIS AGAIN FOR MONTHS

I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW

ITS BACK 

This is one of those posts that you need to save and tag or you’ll never see it again for 84 years.

You got that right

I’m crying

New portal just opened

Day 15: Family

For today I decided to do a late gift art for transientday of her arthur and his cousin/her OC, Lucan!

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!

Thank you for the gift! You made my boy look so good!

COLAB - MSA x Secrets of Veshurra Crossover 

Artwork me and my friends have been working on. A crossover version of all of the Mystery Skulls cast if they were from my personal universe in Secrets of Veshurra. Please do not repost, trace, or claim characters and/or artwork. <3 

Credits: Sketch/SoV by @keylligraphy-ink Lineart by @transientday Color/Shading by @bluebiesartblog Mystery Skulls Animated @mysterybensmysteryblog

What races each of the cast members are: 

This was a super fun opportunity drawing with you guys!

We need to do it again sometime! :D

Jed portrayed the shapeshifting alien taking the form of a Norwegian dog in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). Jed was half-wolf, half Canadian malamute, and according to Carpenter, was an excellent animal actor—after becoming familiar with the cast and crew, he would not look at the camera, crew, or dolly during scenes. Jed’s quiet manner perfectly reflected the alien’s unsettling nature. Jed would go on to act in a few other movies, and lived on his trainer Clint Rowe’s animal sanctuary until his death at age eighteen—quite old for a dog of his breed.

literally where is his oscar