making my own dinosaur

[Production Note: The convention depicted in this post is fictitious and never happened. We are using pictures from various other events Traumador has attended this year which we were unable to post at the time.]

yet another action packed day here at the first ever vivus dinosaur convention.

today i met legendary palaeo-artist brian cooley, dinosaur sculptor extraordinaire! his works grace the halls of some of the best museums in the world... including my old home the royal tyrrell! so i know his art quite well...

turned out today he was leading a special activity secession called "make-a-saurus", and hearing my interest in his palaeo-art mr. cooley invited me to join in.

so what we were doing at "make-a-saurus" was pretty self explanatory and obvious. making our own dinosaur. the thing was i'd never made one before.

in good news mr. cooley had brought everything one could need to create their own dino sculpture. i just had to follow his instructions.
the first part was easy enough. bend wire into the shape of a dinosaur. this wasn't a challenge for my t-rex arms. while they might be short, a tyrannosaurs arms are incredibly powerful for their size!

so having bent all the pieces together i then had to tape them together into the frame for my dinosaur.

well okay, i tried to do this. it turned out to be a lot easier bending the wire than taping it together.

oh and speaking of tape, don't get me started on the stuff...

let's just say we don't get along!

finally having taped the wire together (and untaping me from the counter top!) it was time to beef up our dinosaur's "skeleton" with some foam.

i should point out at this point, that yes i ended up making a ceratopsian. not out of choice mind you, but due to my late entry they'd run out of t-rex kits. oh well, that was fine. at least this way i'd have a visual reference for butchers to look at when i go shopping for triceratops steaks at the supermarket (the human clerks always look at me funny when i ask for them!).

adding all the foam my little trauma-ceratops was starting to look a little healthier.

taping the outside so we had a surface to plaster of paris...

i now had a mummy-ceratops!

the last thing to do (once it'd all dried, and i'd gotten all the tape off me... AGAIN!) was to paint my creation.

you know not bad for a guy whose never taken a single art lesson before!

if you want to learn how to make dinosaurs as awesome at mr. cooley's (cause mine still doesn't remotely compare!) you should check out his book called, coincidental(?), make-a-saurus. it is filled with great tips and ideas for making your own dinosaur artworks.

it would also make a great x-mas gift this holiday season, especially for young dinosaur fans! be sure to pick up your own copy today!