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Post by Infinity Blade on Sept 26, 2023 6:57:16 GMT 5
Kind of disappointed by the Triceratops ngl. The Edmontosaurus look better and worse in some shots IMO, while the T. rex invariably looks pretty great. What don't you like about the Triceratops? A lot of people have compared it to the JW Triceratops and I kind of agree with them. I mean, it does look better, and I'm not going to sap all my energy complaining about it, but it's just barely passable for a documentary, from what I've seen. |
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Post by Exalt on Sept 26, 2023 7:38:27 GMT 5
So what is wrong, more specifically?
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Post by Infinity Blade on Sept 26, 2023 8:18:39 GMT 5
I mean, just...look at it ( comparison between it and the PhP Trike->). Something about that face just seems...off. It's not downright awful, in fact it's probably better than most other Trike models, but that's not too terribly high of a bar. |
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Post by Exalt on Sept 26, 2023 8:42:44 GMT 5
I'm just not seeing it. Maybe you know more than me.
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Post by theropod on Sept 26, 2023 16:23:19 GMT 5
Hmm looks to me like it may be based on subadult specimens, with the shorter, more triangular snout and the simpler, forward-sloping horns, and for those it looks alright to me.  DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2006.3643 On a related note, something that always bothered me a little about the Prehistoric Planet version of Triceratops is that all specimens, from the smallest to the largest, were always shown with very distinctive epoccipitals adorning the frill margins. These bones fuse to the frill during ontogeny, and more or less blend in with its margin in old adults, giving the frill a fairly smooth-edged appearance (at least osteologically):  So the old adult should have a smooth frill, or, at the very least, a much smoother one with less prominent protuberances than the smaller, younger specimens. Sadly ignoring this is very widespread in paleoart. Or more specifically, a vast majority of Triceratops reconstructions seem to be uncritically, perhaps unknowingly based on the subadult condition, leading to the incorrect impression that all Triceratops looked like that. I’m not sure if this is primarily because there’s more material and references (e.g. the skeletals by Greg Paul and Scott Hartman) illustrating such young individuals, or because people just subconsciously prefer the aesthetic of Trike with a spiky frill margin. But anyway, the actual appearance of an old adult specimen is almost unrepresented in paleoart, with the exception of Mark Witton’s renditions:  markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2017/11/can-we-predict-horn-shapes-of-fossil.htmlSo it’s a bit unfortunate that PP, despite otherwise doing such an excellent job on their Triceratops model, seems to have fallen for this issue as well. Of course seeing a Triceratops with prominently visible epoccipitals isn’t wrong per se, as we can simply interpret such individuals as subadults/young adults (which were certainly common), but we shouldn’t be seeing such prominent ones on an individual clearly shown to be a very large and old adult, and we shouldn’t exclusively see individuals with prominent epoccipitals if we’re shown a large variety of specimens representing different ontogenetic stages. I think the only documentary I recall ever showing us a Triceratops that could be such an old adult on the basis of its smooth frill margin is 'The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs' |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Sept 26, 2023 16:56:44 GMT 5
A potential defense of this "paleomeme" (something I've heard brought up by Matt Dempsey once) is the fact that we may be able to apply the same logic applied to horns in that very blog post by Witton to the epoccipitals. If the orbital horn sheathes retain a bit of the upwards sweeping horn curvature from the juvenile condition (until/unless they were finally worn down by use), the same could apply to the epoccipitals. That the bone cores fuse to the frill doesn't necessarily mean the triangle-shaped keratinous sheathes from its juvenile days will become smooth, until/unless they become worn (and I'm not sure what exactly would eventually wear them down, unlike with the orbital horns), so it could be depictions of adult Triceratops with these frill margins aren't necessarily wrong.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 26, 2023 18:56:35 GMT 5
This criticism feels kind of ironic considering that the show was praised for having the babies not just look like scales-down adults. Also, I think that that artwork looks quite good.
People on twitter comparing LOOP to PhP unfavorably are getting on my nerves. At least wait for the show to come out...
I think that the cenozoic stuff looks very nice. I'm not sure how I feel about how the cub Smilodon look, but the adults look great to me, as does the terrorbird. Doedicurus seems good but we've not gotten a good look at the tail. I think that the mammoths look pretty nice. On a technical level, this is the nicest that they've made the fur look that I can speak for.
I feel too out of my depth for the gorgonopsid, and the other Permian animals look nice, bur considering that most of my knowledge here comes from WWM...I'll definitely pass on giving a verdict.
I was a bit hesitant to give opinions at all given that due to the nature of what this is, I could be very easily swayed on aesthetics that may not hold up to an experts eye.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Sept 26, 2023 19:37:05 GMT 5
Hmm looks to me like it may be based on subadult specimens, with the shorter, more triangular snout and the simpler, forward-sloping horns, and for those it looks alright to me. I wonder, could being a subadult be the reason the Triceratops in the trailer appears to flee instead of standing its ground? I was very perplexed at why it may have been doing so, but if it is fleeing and if it is a subadult I guess that would be more appropriate - or at least less inappropriate. |
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Post by theropod on Sept 26, 2023 22:42:38 GMT 5
I’ve wondered the same thing. Sometimes real animals (humans included) will panic and flee irrationally, in situations in which it isn’t the smartest thing to do, so I’d have had no particular quarrel with even an adult Triceratops occasionally fleeing instead of standing its ground. But the animal does look like a subadult morphologically, and it does look a fair bit smaller than the T. rex, so that does make this behaviour more likely.
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Post by Supercommunist on Sept 26, 2023 23:37:58 GMT 5
Entire herds of cape buffalo and bison will often flee from lions and wolves that they could individually beat if they put their minds to it.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 27, 2023 2:08:44 GMT 5
Sometimes, animals will even be scared off by something smaller than they are.
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Post by theropod on Sept 27, 2023 3:05:30 GMT 5
There’s a reason the advice when faced with a large predator is usually to not flee, to make yourself look big and imposing, and try to impress it into backing down¹, even if there’s no way an unarmed human would actually stand a chance fighting something like a lion or a bear. And there’s also a reason people need to be reminded of that; many would instinctively try to flee, even if whatever they are fleeing from is way faster then them, and objectively speaking they don’t have a chance in hell of outrunning it. So both humans and large predators potentially facing them can be prone to act irrationally.
¹At least for predators that, while much more powerful than us, don’t generally see us as prey. This won’t work on a polar bear, obviously. Likely won’t work on a leopard either, but then, a leopard is small enough that you will likely stand a better chance at surviving the encounter if you fight it than if you turn your back and run.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 27, 2023 3:29:10 GMT 5
I've heard that with pumas, you should walk backwards away from them, because turning around is giving them an opening.
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Post by Exalt on Sept 27, 2023 3:38:29 GMT 5
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Post by dinosauria101 on Sept 27, 2023 3:41:55 GMT 5
Where in the article does it say that? I haven't been able to find it. |
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