May starlight guide you home tonight…

A shabby start to Inktober — two days of nothing, and the third is aggressively ink-free. Nevertheless, there are musical dinosaurs, so I like to think it was worth it in the end.

“But there are ALWAYS musical dinosaurs in this blog,” you might lament — and you would be entirely justified in this complaint. But you see, this one is actually PLAYING AN INSTRUMENT.

What mad musical mash-up has caught my fancy today? It’s a doozy, so you might want to sit down: Graphic novel + song + Robin Hood (THE ANIMATED ONE, I.E. THE ONLY ONE)  + dinosaur action figures! + birds, sort of! Whaaaat?

Let’s break this down. Basically, it started with the book In Other Lands, which has nothing to do with this at all but got me in an anachronistic-old-timey-fantasy mood (yes, that is one of my many possible mood settings). I also had to read a very enthusiastic chapter about Chaucer for one of my classes. I also also found a graphic novel with an amazing title (Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo: The Road to Epoli — plus there’s a skeleton in a hat on the cover?!) so I had to grab that. And about half that graphic novel (which is about a traveling skeleton minstrel?!?!) is a song about a wanderer and a sort of spooky haunted fog … and at the end there’s a link to a recording of the song. Which is over nine minutes long, but I digress.

Around the same time there was a fanart display being hosted by Creative Beast Studio, who makes aforementioned dinosaur action figures! with coloration based on living birds, and I was thinking how some (particularly the kestrel/dromaeosaur, my best friend), with their poofy little arm feathers, reminded me of that rooster minstrel from  Hamster Dance Whistle-Stop in Robin Hood. He was the best. Anyhow, in the winding caverns of my brain, rooster minstrel met skeleton minstrel and also dinosaurs, so obviously (?!) I had to make a traveling dromaeosaur trapped in the fog, maaaaaybe returning to skeleton form himself, on the Road to Epoli.

One of these days I’m going to draw something that doesn’t require so much backstory.

A fire in a flask….

Hurricane, by Panic! at the Disco

They know, I know/That they don’t look like me
Oh, they know, I know/That they don’t sound like me
You’ll dance to anything/You’ll dance to anything

Naturally we were going to get a Panic! at the Disco song in here eventually since they’re on tour right now … anyhow, these songs always make me think of dancing birds, and even more so for one that actually mentions dancing. But Velociraptors are more fun to draw, so that’s what you’re getting.

For this one I imagined a fella from a neighboring region, with a slightly different type of plumage and courtship ritual, stopping by to check out the local ladies (sort of like what you get with modern songbirds of closely-related species when ranges overlap). Those proper males in the background are not at all impressed with the little newcomer’s fluffy crest and rather modest feather-sideburns, but the female (the taller one, because raptors) seems to be enjoying this dance….

More like a six-foot turkey….

Not much to report. Missed a day of posting, but made a drawing at 11:55PM and one at 12:01 AM so TECHNICALLY I’m still at one per day. Except of course for the first day. Oh, hush, you.

Three-horns NEVER play with long-necks…

It’s *not* Pachyrhinosaurus, m’kay. Completely different ceratopsid. The timing does make it seem a bit derivative, but I swear I only saw one Walking With Dinosaurs advertisement. The design actually owes more to those crazy spots and bullseyes Gregory S. Paul likes putting on things — not that they shouldn’t have spots or stripes or whatever, but they do have a way of standing out.

Name: Shale

Habitat: Plains

Likes: Plants, watering holes, mud

Dislikes: Asteroids, ice ages, deluges

Personal Quote: “Unicorns are just jealous”