The Raptormaniacs Tumblr

In an effort to make myself do more with my web comic thing, I present my new extension of it, the Raptormaniacs Tumblr askblog, where readers can send in questions for the comic characters. This format has several benefits over my previous convention, such as the fact that I probably won't have to use as many panels most of the time. I don't plan on crossposting every individual Tumblr post I make to this blog, but I will post "Tumblr roundups" here once a given number of posts has been put up or a given amount of time passed.

I get fanart again!

The above is courtesy of John Turmelle, also known as classicalguy on DeviantArt, who, in addition to producing this artwork, said a lot of kind words about my comic/blog/thingamabob in his artist's comments. I love it. I love that Remex is holding Tet Zoo the book, I love Zahavi maniacally holding a mallet, I love Skull being Skull. Words cannot express how happy and astounded I am that there are people who like Raptormaniacs this much, so I'll just provide a .gif instead. (I'd link to a clip of that scene but I can't find one on YouTube.)

Oh yes, I hinted earlier that I'd be making another announcement about the comics soon. Fear not; it really is coming. I just need to get something else that I've been working on out of the way first.

Raptormaniacs Revamp (For Real)

At long last I have come around to revisit the original reason I started this blog to begin with: the Raptormaniacs web comic. It's been more than a year since I last drew a real comic for the blog and much has changed since then. I started dabbling in digital art, for one thing. For another, there have been new scientific discoveries that have made my character designs outdated. All that called for something of a makeover.

For the sake of trivia, have a quick list of the major changes I made.

-I've had readers tell me that they've had trouble differentiating between Savape and Zahavi. In hindsight it was extremely foolish of me to have two "archaeopterygid"-type main characters in the comic and for a long time I'd wanted to either put up a guide to distinguishing the two or have Zahavi transform into a larger troodont in-universe to eliminate the problem. (He has unlimited cartoon powers; he can do that kind of thing.) In the meantime though, paleontology came to the rescue. New analysis of Archaeopteryx feathers show that they had black leading edges. Although an earlier study already demonstrated that the original Archaeopteryx specimen, an isolated covert feather, was dark colored, I had been reluctant to include this in the comic for fear that it would quickly wear down my pencils. Switching to digital art removes the dilemma. Savape's new color patterns are not easy to see at the resolution of the new dramatis personae above, but with luck she should be less mistakable when she shows up in future comics. While we're at it, I gave Remex his tail bands too.

-Feathers extend down to the foot in all the characters (besides Skull and Dinky for obvious reasons) now, based on new Mesozoic avialan specimens showing the ubiquity of foot feathers in Mesozoic theropods. (There's something I wasn't kidding about!)

-Ebeff now has pennibrachiae (wings), based on new evidence of them being present in (adult) ornithomimosaurs, suggesting a wider phylogenetic bracket for them.

-A number of aesthetic choices, such as smoothing the body contours of most of the characters (based on the concept that "primitive"-looking body feathers on fossil dinosaur specimens may be taphonomic illusions) and making their hands and upper legs more obscured by feathers (because there's no reason to think they didn't work like living birds in that respect).

Can I guarantee that I'll post comics more frequently now? Simply put, no. However, I might do an experiment that may help me in doing so, to be revealed shortly.