Age of Reptiles news!

I'd like to announce that I am working on a second Age of Reptiles story in addition to Ancient Egyptians. This new story is a short, eight-page story, and as it gets closer to publication I'll keep all five of you informed. Ancient Egyptians is a four-issue series, and I'm on page 10 of issue 3, so please be patient. I'm really slow. These, like all my comics, will be published by Dark Horse Comics. As I get closer to finishing these stories, I'll make more announcement. The short story has a title, but I'm gonna keep that a secret for the moment:)

Styracosaurus buck

More designs from the show that will never have a name.

Hieroglyph- Nomad's Mount

I'm gonna have to give this species a name someday....

Troodon

Another design from the show I never wanna talk about again.

Ralph McQuarrie: Probe Droid from Empire Strikes Back

Ralph was the man. We're all just trying to stand on his shoulders. I thought this was an incredible piece when I first saw it, sitting in the back of my parents' car after I had bought my copy of the Empire Strikes Back Portfolio.

JP3- A chase through the park

I was a little disappointed in my cereal this morning. I'm still trying to get used to almond milk.

Costa Rican soccer: Cartago vs Heredia, or how to blow a championship

Cartago has not won the Tico Championship in over seventy years, had won the first match and had a two-goal point lead heading into the last game, but Heredia storms back and wins the last game and the title...

 
...and Heredia celebrates.

Hieroglyph- Assassin

In a sea of drawings of mine that I hate, I can tolerate this one.

My birthday and some Star Wars Trailers!

I turned 13 years old when Star Wars came out in 1977, so today I'll mark that occasion with three videos:

May the Force be with you, always.

Another mediocre drawing excursion into Jurassic Park 3

"Arise, Sir Loin of Beef!"

From Rabbit Hood (1949) directed by Chuck Jones.

If you don't think it's funny, go away.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly finale

Shut up and watch this.

This is where some of you will say, "Hey, this looks like a Tarantino film."

Noooooo, this is where Tarantino got a lot of his ideas.

Lee Van Cleef's middle finger seems to be cut off, if you watch carefully.

Eli Wallach plays simultaneously a typical western racial stereotype as well as one of the greatest characters I've ever seen in a film.

Hieroglyph- snake creature

Toast and coffee for breakfast:)

Cool test

If you don't know who these guys are, go away and never come back.

Hieroglyph- Water Being

This species are like the custodians of the planet that the story takes place on.

Utahraptor Alpha

"I'm Batman!"

John Nichols- Author of the New Mexico Trilogy

I read these books in college and was really impressed with thier attention to the larger story, kinda like A Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. Anyway, here's the author of that trilogy talking about creativity.

Enjoy.

Rebeca Delgado, King Kong and the Shrine Auditorium

All five of you know about my obsession with King Kong. What you don't know was that they shot this scene in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

It's a very beautiful place inside and out, even today...

 

...and it became even more beautiful as yesterday my daughter Rebeca received her BFA in Screenwriting from the School of Cinema in the Shrine auditorium, right across the street from the campus. 

So, it's poetic to me that Rebeca begins to really live in the place where Kong began to die. Perhaps this is silly, but life threads that weave together like this really move me, especially when it has to do with one of the most important people in my life.

 

CONGRATULATIONS, REBECA!
I LOVE YOU!

DAD

 

JP3 Ingen lab ideas

Utahraptor

This is another design from the anonymous television show. I dunno if these bigger therapods were feathered or not, but I'm sure that somewhere there are two paleontologists that are ready to argue about it endlessly.

Hieroglyph- Ancient/ Host

Suchomimus

Another design from the anonymous dino show.

I'm really proud of this one.

Coelophysis

I'm thinking Telapia and ricearoni for lunch:)

La Llorona behind the scenes tour, parts 1 and 2

...and part 2...

Okay...maybe this is not for little kids...but it's cool to see how the night setting for the event affects the attraction's mood.

Hieroglyph- Centurion

So a decade ago I created the comic book series Hieroglyph, which ties into my novel Warhead. Now, in preparation for the comic, I had to design all of the characters beforehand, and I'll begin to include these designs here in the weeks to come. Special thanks to Fernando Olmedo, one of my students who was good enough to scan these images.

Anyway, this is the design for the Centurion, a character in the story and one of my favorite designs, which is kinda rare for me.

Majungasaurus

I've resigned myself to a salad for lunch again:(

La Llorona @ Halloween Horror Nights

Okay, this looks pretty cool.

Joe Jump CZL lab

This is a turn-around for a lab that I did for Joe Jump, before it became Reeboot Ralph or Wreck it Ralph.
The first design is below:

Wherever you go, there you are...

"I'm so sick of your JP3 stuff!"

So am I.

Some more JP3 Pteranodon gags

Did I post this one already?
If you know the answer, you've got to go outside and feel the sunshine on your face a little more.

Tylosaurus

Here's the design for a Tylosaurus for a TV show that I'd rather not admit I worked on.
If you have to look through my bio to figure it out, you have too much time on your hands.

I hate salads.

Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 century!

From 1946. Directed by Chuck Jones.

If you don't think this is funny, don't come back here...



1:23- "Indubitaboobily, sir!"

4:20-  disintegrating vest gag

Jurassic Park 3 breeding tank idea

"I'm so sick of you posting Jurassic Park 3 stuff!"

Me too.

Here's an idea for a Mosasaur breeding tank.

Happy Mother's Day from Diego Velazquez

Portrait of Maria Teresa of Austria, oil on canvas, done in 1652-3, according to Wikipedia.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks for everything. I love you.

La Agonia of the Valley of Gwangi

I was very young when I had a coloring book based on Ray's film Valley of Gwangi. It's long gone, but it looks like this:

I was less than ten years old, and I had no idea who Ray Harryhausen was, but I was fascinated by this poster and by the movie, which is of course about dinosaurs and cowboys. Here's some more images of Gwangi, the purple (not Barney) allosaur that starred in the picture:

I don't remember how old I was when I saw the film, but I thought the roping of an allosaur was the coolest thing I'd ever seen that had was not on Skull Island...

I totally believed, in my childhood, that this dinosaur was alive...

So they finally catch ole' Gwangi and take him back to town, kinda like Kong...

So, Gwangi breaks out and fights an elephant, which  also happens in 20 Million years to Earth, another one of Ray's films...

But I didn't care...

So, after he fights the elephant, Gwangi razes the town, which is described as 'South of the Border, in the 18th Century' if I'm not mistaken. This is important because in 1972 my mom took my siblings and I to Costa Rica so that our youngest brother Ralph (who is now a BG artist on The Simpsons) could be born. So, when I looked at Gwangi I thought of Alajuela, the town my parents are from and I remembered walking around all of that Colonial architecture in Alajuela and somehow this all melted together for me, so even today when I think of Alajuela, I think of a giant purple Allosaurus running around Alajuela, lol. 

...so it's strange for me to be so emotional about Ray's passing, because even though I barely knew the guy, he influenced me so much as a kid, even before I knew who he was. 

 In the middle of my 1972 Alajuela world was, to my childhood eyes, a cathedral known as La Agonia (the Agony), which is still there. My parent's parents lived right across the street from La Agonia...

...and I played on these steps as an eight-year old kid, with my siblings and cousins. My memory is foggy now, but it all somehow mixes together for me when I see this church where my parents went to mass as kids and I played in years later, and somehow transposing it onto a giant purple Allosaurus movie...

..so when Gwangi died, he seemed to die in La Agonia, which is weird to me I know, but somehow to the childhood me, it all made perfect sense.

Jurassic Park 3- Spino chase idea

I might have posted this before, but some of these ideas of the Spino's head getting stuff in tree trunks so as not to eat the protagonists ended up in the picture...

Ray Harryhausen's Rhedosaurus

As a kid I began to obsess over films with giant reptiles in them, and Ray's Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was one of them. Now, there's a whole backstory to this film that I'm not going to get into, but to paraphrase Ray and Ray Bradbury, who as you know is another hero of mine, kinda ended up collaborating in a way on this film, Bradbury having written the original story for the Saturday Evening Post and Harryhausen having animated the darn thing for the movie, but after King Kong, my first complete obsession, I was utterly fascinated with the fictitious dinosaur of this film. Here are some still from the film, which adult me now sees as some of the finest examples of lighting in Ray's animation. There are film critics that say this film inspired Godzilla, King of the Monsters, but in any case, here's some stills:

And here's the puppet:

And here's a trailer for the 1952 film: