It’s nice to imagine it wandering into Hell Creek. The story ends with a visit to Alamosaurus, that mighty sauropod who technically had a more southerly range. I love the charisma of this Troodon pack and the way they and Kevin regard each other. There are some details to quibble over, like the undermuscled look of some of the animals, the unfeathered Troodon hands, and the proportions of Quetzalcoatlus (the head to body ratio could be pushed more in the head’s favor), but that’s just me ticking the critical checkboxes, and we are talking about work done 12 years ago, a veritable eternity in the Golden Age of Dinosaur Palaeontology. It fills a whole page and stands out for the vague grasslike vegetation fully surrounding the grumpy ankylosaur, drawing the eye to that imposing visage. David told me that he remembered his favorite page from the book being the Ankylosaurus, and indeed, it is pretty damned awesome. Though the glaring omission of Edmontosaurus wounds me, it a wide variety of animals get the spotlight. Kevin could stand to be a bit more elongated in the snout, but the zippy and gracile form of juvenile tyrannosaurs certainly comes through in the illustrations. The art is definitely pushed into an stylized and cartoony direction, but not so much that we lose the details that make each species ring true. I can’t stress enough what a treat it is to see work of this caliber in a book that could very well have been handed to an illustrator with only a shallow grasp on the saurian physique. I’ll call him Kevin.Īs Kevin goes on his roaring spree, we are treated to a variety of poses, all full of life and personality. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity that the little rexy wasn’t given a name – T. It almost reads as a parody of the “always-roaring-theropod” trope, but more likely the authors, Ron Lytle and Scott Sonneborn, were just telling a comical tale that would be relatable to small children. The book tells the story of a young tyrannosaur encountering his fellow Hell Creek denizens and loudly making himself known along the way. The company shifted focus away from original titles to licensed properties. I’m not sure when this title was released – as it’s technically a toy, it doesn’t have a publication date, but when I asked him, David remembered working on it in 2007, on a very tight timeline. If not though, David has done amazing character design and animation work on Disney’s Dinosaur, Dinosaur Revolution and Walking With Dinosaurs 3D, and has been steadily employed as a storyboard artist for an obscure creative franchise called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Many of you surely recognize his name, as David is an engaged member of the paleoart community on Facebook, and long-time readers have seen plenty of his art shared in this space over the years. Yup, this is a Leapfrog interactive book illustrated by none other than David Krentz. When I flipped back to the title page, all was made clear. The titular rexy was interacting with contemporaneous animals, even! Not a stegosaur in sight! It seemed way too good to be true. The animals had interesting color schemes, the pages were playfully composed, and in general this illustrator took a lively and enthusiastic approach to the subject matter. The attention to anatomical detail was there. Paging through the book to get a feel for it, I was a little bit stunned. It’s a definitely a cut above the typical fare. But it’s very rare that I find something as interesting as this. Rex’s Mighty Roar (sic) popped out at me. As I scanned the children’s book shelves at one of the thrift store giant’s nearby locations, the title T. One minute you’re browsing the questionable offerings of the Goodwill cookbook section, the next you’re stumbling upon a forgotten bit of a modern master’s paleoart oeuvre.
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