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Droemar — Theropod Tutorial
Published: 2008-02-12 06:15:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 99208; Favourites: 3335; Downloads: 4734
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Description
A sequel of sorts to the Raptor Tutorial. Again, this is as much for me as anyone else; my hope is that other people will be able to benefit from my rather nonsensical scribblings. I should be updating my comic tomorrow.Theropods are pretty hard to nail down; saying you're going to draw them is like saying you're going to draw a canine or feline. There are a LOT of variations, and half the scientists in the world are debating who goes where. I focused on the clade that Acrocanthosaurus belongs to, because those are the ones I'm really studying. (They're the villains in mah book.) I did add T-Rex in, but mostly for the benefit of showing the pinnacle of specialization the guy was. That bulldog neck and battering ram skull more than make up for his dinky forepaws.
Theropods really were the ultimate predator. I don't care what you compare them to: sharks, orcas, tigers, bears, wolves. I have a wall chart that shows how big the various species in my book were in relation to each other, and seeing an Acro go after an Astrodon must've been like watching gods fight, let alone what a Giganotosaurus would have looked like going after an Argentinosaurus.
You just can't beat something that could run you down and eat you in a couple of bites.
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Comments: 131
great! i search for a tutorial like this for a long time!
it's great!
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I like the on in the bottom right corner... He looks majestic...
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Thanks for the tutorial.
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Thank you so much for this! ^^
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your tutorial is a great example of how to use simple shapes to work out your drawings. i just linked this page to a friend who has trouble with that sort of stuff
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love dino's. have you ever read Tribal Warfare? A very good visual novel with dinos.
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They really were some of the greatest hunters ever to even walk this earth.
When you think about it, most of the greatest, biggest and most Gracefull hunters lived in the past, like T-Rex or The Raptors. Even the mammal predators like Smilodon were great.
But Dinosaurs were some of the best XD
And hardest to draw at that, but oh so fun to admire lolz
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Gigantosaurus going after Argentinosaurus... Damn, that would be awesome...
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[link] I used your amazing tutorial for a reference. I linked back to the deviation, btw.
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Hey, that's pretty goog. Glad I could help you with your dinos.
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Thanks! And I'm glad, too! Your art ish made of win!
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Wow this really helped me. thanks for posting.
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wonderful! i plan to use ur tutorials in my future projects! i think they'll help me alot . . . . but you never mentioned the strong s curve of the necks of therapods.
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Hey there, fellow dino-fan! I recentrly made a little tutorial on the process of drawing a T-Rex, but only after that I looked for other works on the subject. I think yours --both the Theropod and the Raptor anatomy tuts-- are awesome and really, really useful. So I linked back to them and you on mine [link] Hope you can check it out too. Kudos!
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Very cool! Glad to see I was able to help. Your tutorial rocks.
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Late comment, but does the topmost picture show the way they stand at their most upright?
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It's probably pretty close. As long as the leg obeys the 90 degree rule, they could stretch, I'm sure.
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Hey, he looks awesome! Good job. Glad my stuff helped.
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I love your tutorials. I use them as constant reference! Thankyou
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Awesome < 3. Will definitely use at some point. I'm sure it'll help especially with the claws/feet :].
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What does the length of the two femur and the tibia mentioned have to do with speed?
Lots of artists forget the vestigial toes, I've noticed.
The skeletons are always arranged in such a way that it appears that the living, breathing dinosaur would tip flat over were it to stand accordingly. Always made me giggle at the museums. Either that or they were epically fighting something.
Aren't modern day carnivores usually assumed to be more intelligent than their prey? I've never though of deer as particularity intelligent. And all the major species of the smart-spectrum are predatory or omnivorous, right?
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The tail of the theropod created a counterbalance to the massive head, in the same way a giraffe's body counterbalances the very long neck. I agree, though, a lot of museums put them together in a way that's awkward to say the least.
The femur being longer than the tibia means that the dinosaur had a very long stride, and a bone robust enough to handle the weight of a moving dino (say, if he were charging, or if all his weight were on one leg.) If the tibia and shin bones were longer than the femur, the stride would not be so long, and the leg probably wouldn't have been designed for specialized running.
But mostly, I mentioned it so that people know to draw the thighs longer than the shins, so your legs look right.
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look at the leg proportions on Ostriches or even horses to see that actually the exact opposite is the case. The trend in fast moving animals is for the entire lower portion of the leg to be elongated relative to the femur. It's not just the tibia and the femur you have to look at, but the metacarpals too.
The fact that Tyrannosaurs have long femurs and relatively short metacarpals would tend to suggest that they would've been more comfortable walking than running. Interestingly, the proportions change quite substantially between young and adult, so the juveniles would've been a lot nimbler and more suited to speed. Of course being smaller, they wouldn't have the same stride length so maybe they had to run to keep up.
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Just noticed that I actually meant metatarsals here. Still struggle with terminology.
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I've heard it said that adult T-Rexes probably could have been exclusive scavengers because their size would have bullied off anyone else. I kind of like the theory that they were hunters and youngsters and became kind of thieving curmudgeons in their old age.
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That's Horner's theory on the scavenger T.rex, but even Horner says he doesn't believe it was an exclusive scavenger. I'm sure a fair portion of any carnivore's diet will involve some scavenging anyway. I think Horner actually made the point about the leg proportions being suited to walking. Of course T.rex would've only had to be fast enough to outrun its prey, and Edmontosaurus or Triceratops were hardly sprinters either. The idea that a T.rex would risk taking on a healthy adult Triceratops is probably a bit sensationalist, but I could see them finishing off sick animals, crippled animals and younger animals.
There's a lot of juvenile Gorgosaurus skeletons, as well as Tarbosaurus, and the Jane T.rex skeleton to go by. It does seem like they may have had a different approach to hunting at that stage. They have a very different build. Perhaps they focused on smaller prey like mammals and smaller dinosaurs like Thescelosaurus.
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thanks a lot , i love drawing dinos and u helped a lot .
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Hrm. Never seen a theropod foot with five toes... though that fifth one looks pretty delicate and reduced... seems to me like an appendage like that would be buried in the meat of the dinosaur's foot, like T. Rex's third "finger".
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Well, I agree that Theropods were great predators, among some of the greatest predators to roam the planet (though I have some bias towards the orca b/c of my major) I must say that I believe that the greatest predators are also some of the smallest. Spiders. While most predators are opportunists hunting but feasting on carrion at the same time. Spiders won't recognize food if it is dead so it must hunt to provide nourishment for itself. Spiders won't scavenge I know I had a pet tarantula and I tried to feed her an already dead cricket but she did not recognize it as food.
I do how ever love dinosaurs they are as close as one can get to real dragons well, except for maybe crocodiles but any hoo good work it helped me out a lot!
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Some early theropods may have had five toes, but I'm pretty sure most of them had four, with one off the ground. I'll have to double check.
I'm really happy that someone is putting up these tutorials. I tell ya, I keep seeing terrible dinosaur art and shaking my head, wondering why people can't look up references to draw dinosaurs...
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What a wonderful tutorial, I love dinos.
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OMG this is Awesome Iv'e looked everywhere for a dino drawing tutorial and now I have found it.
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This is a great tutorial. :]
You really explain how the body flows well.
I just wish I had found it before I made my avatar, it would have helped a lot. xD
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Colour me the Latecomer, but man, you are such a specialist on dinos, Dino-Lady-Ma'am... I won't be surprised if one day you'll end up doing Dinotopia or something. :3... anyway, I'll be short and sweet. Definite inspirational material if I ever work up the nerve to do dinosaurs properly. True genius.
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...This is so helpful. Omg. O:
I have so much trouble getting the feet and centers of gravity. This is perfect!
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All your tuts are great. I'm faving them all. Sorry though if I don't comment on them all. XD
Maybe you could do a rex tut some time? I'm okay with my rexes, but every time I'm done i just feel like... it's missing something.
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I probably won't delve in any deeper than straight theropod, cause it's Acrocanthosaurus I'm looking to really nail down. T-Rex has the most complete bone specimens in multiple respects (it's the only one they got soft tissue from), so the only thing I can recommend is studying the bones and reading up on them.
Plus, consider how popular Rex is, there shouldn't be any shortage of reference!
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