Clash of the Dinosaurs, for What on Earth! Magazine

The front cover image, and 4 spreads of internal illustrations, for the dinosaur issue of What on Earth! Magazine.

The magazine audience is typically 7-9 year olds, so the aim from the team was to make the artwork and pages really bold and colourful, taking inspiration from classic comics.

Cover image

The brief for the cover illustration was to create an homage to 1960s Godzilla posters, featuring a kaiju-esque menagerie of dinosaurs bursting outward from a central T. Rex. Originally the design featured a background volcano, but it was taken out for the final cover in favour of a punchy orange.

BIG FIGHT

The classic head-to-head between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Triceratops from the Late Cretaceous, Hell Creek Formation. I decided (because we didn’t want to show any actual gore or blood), to use a ‘Dutch tilt’ view point, to add drama. The colourings of the dinosaurs are loosely inspired (accidentally, initially) by the Toy Story dinosaurs, Rex and Trixie.

Scale

The magazine wanted a page dedicated to focusing on the ridiculous scale some dinosaurs got to, and suggested Spinosaurus and a sauropod. I pitched for the Jurassic Period giant, Giraffatitan; to allow for child-friendly comparisons to modern giraffes. I also suggested we show the Spinosaurus diving, to give the dinosaurs a kind of yin-yang layout quality in the spread.

Herbivore variety

This page was going to become Top Trumps style playing cards, showing off some of the bizzare evolutionary features found amongst herbivores. We chose Stegosaurus for the plates, Styracosaurus for the head frill and horns, hadrosaurs Olorotitan and Lambaosaurus, for the array of head crests, and Therizinosaurus for it’s massive claws (and general weirdness). I drew the dinosaurs as isolated spots for the design to build information-filled card graphics for.

The herd

The final spread was to show how dinosaurs worked together, as herds and as predators. I pitched a Late Cretaceous forest, featuring species found in
Dinosaur Park Formation Alberta. It shows a herd of Parasaurolophus being watched by a pack of Dromaeosaurs and a lone Gorgosaurus in the distance.

Art directors: Andrew Pettie & Mark Hickling
Designers: Mark Hickling & Susanna Hickling

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VECTOR THAT FOX

Clash of the Dinosaurs, for What on Earth! Magazine

The front cover image, and 4 spreads of internal illustrations, for the dinosaur issue of What on Earth! Magazine.

The magazine audience is typically 7-9 year olds, so the aim from the team was to make the artwork and pages really bold and colourful, taking inspiration from classic comics.

The brief for the cover illustration was to create an homage to 1960s Godzilla posters, featuring a kaiju-esque menagerie of dinosaurs bursting outward from a central T. Rex. Originally the design featured a background volcano, but it was taken out for the final cover in favour of a punchy orange.

The final spread was to show how dinosaurs worked together, as herds and as predators. I pitched a Late Cretaceous forest, featuring species found in Dinosaur Park Formation Alberta. It shows a herd of Parasaurolophus being watched by a pack of Dromaeosaurs and a lone Gorgosaurus in the distance.

The final spread was to show how dinosaurs worked together, as herds and as predators. I pitched a Late Cretaceous forest, featuring species found in
Dinosaur Park Formation Alberta. It shows a herd of Parasaurolophus being watched by a pack of Dromaeosaurs and a lone Gorgosaurus in the distance.