Qilong

It's a day late.

Last month at this time, I offered those who pay attention a full-size, quality line art which they can adapt to whatever color scheme they saw fit. Unfortunately, I got very few responses on this, to which I will acknowledge you all.

~Fragillimus335 provided two: One painted like an oriole, and one a lot more like a loon. I like the loon quite a bit, I must say.

~Orionide5 provided one with an extremely cassowary-like appearance, nice cryptic body plumage with a brilliant, display-oriented facial patterning.

~MommaCabbit gave us this detailed look, based on a cross between a sparrow, ptarmigan, prairie chicken and an ostrich; quite a lot of diversity there, suggestive of a secretive, camouflaged animal.

~PrimevalRaptor provided distinct accents in blueface with bright plumage contrast. Very nice.

*BrandonSPilcher provided a striking splash of golds and blues; this bird won't blend in.

I won't list amongst these those I would think are closer to the truth. Frankly, I wouldn't know where to start. All of them are very nice, and show off their skills and style equally for all that its based on something I drew that could have been much better drawn.

If I missed one of your submissions, please let me know! I do wish this had more entrants so as to provide a nice diversity. As is, MommaCabbit's definitely seems to me pretty close to what I'd imagine a desert animal to have, but the Nemegt fauna was fairly tropical, so we'd might see something more colorful.

I'm a very worldly, realistic sort of person; neither pessimistic nor really optimistic. I like keeping my options open, but understand bad things happens. "No plan survives contact with the enemy," as Helmut von Moltke wrote.

That said, I enjoy reading fantasy and sci-fi, especially the good authors such as LeGuin and Herbert, Williams, Jordan, Sanderson and Rawn, but also enjoy silly fantasy and the great classics like Tolkein (of course, everyone says that). When I was little, as I was getting into dinosaurs, I started thinking of making up my own universe to make stories in, but as an avid reader at 10, I didn't think of this as a world ot PLAY in, and so I set out to make it a practical thing. I never got far with the early stages of it, and various home problems, school problems, and family got in the way of things, plus I started developing an interest in paleontology, and the realism set aside the fantasy for a long while.

I'm still a scientist, and I will reflect this in the story (one of the characters is forensically inclined; genetics underlies the entire structure of the story) but a part of me worries about the reception. As a scientist, with aspersions to publication, I worry that if I were to do anything with this it might temper or ruin my reputation as a scientist, or vice versa. But there is a thing about getting something out of your head and not merely on paper and unseen --- that's not the point of a story: it must be told!

(The story is a long one, involves a few players, some bit characters ... and a rather well-detailed world. Really, this is Brian Sanderson level of detail and planning for characters and setting, but it hasn't been possible for me to really work on it. This map I produced is a way for me to place SOME of the intellectual work put into this world out there, especially as it exists in a 3D form in my head and it is rather hard to keep letting it percolate in there. There've been better maps, but I can't find them all anymore and suspect most have been destroyed, so this one is sort of a rehash of the first frame of context, the map you'd find on the inner matter of the book, but no detailed atlas. You needn't even see the map for some of the things that would occur, as the scope is small.

One major setback to this story is that I've realized that I do not want to let it follow the bad tropes, but I also don't want to just be a trope junkie, and I certainly don't want to be like George Martin and orgasmically subvert and avert tropes without any seeming rhyme or reason. Despite these, each of the main characters falls into the tropeverse: You've got your rebellious Princess; your disgraced Hero; your noble Warrior; your little Miss Snarker; your wise Outcast; and so forth. But the problem with these is that while these are the tropes, they need to be not obvious, and that's been a little problem. And they've got problems, and they don't get resolved at the end of the story, as that would be boring -- I HATE just "wrapping things up," a sense of realism that at least is one thing I agree with George Martin's "methodology" on. Things don't end, you just pull the camera back and turn the lights off.)

If I were to tell this story then, the ramifications and function it has might backlash. Is it deserved in the end? Don't know.

I am opening my resources up for commissions, if any one is interested.

My art, as anyone can plainly see, lends itself well to detailed graphite work in a fairly modest style, very naturalistic, but can lean cartoonish if that is what you desire. I also do a pointilist ink style, and have been known to design a tattoo here and there (there are people who wear my work on their bodies, for which I am exceedingly proud). The style of my work doesn't depend on what my gallery shows: I have and can do styles and subjects not apparent in the gallery. I also do some digital work, though everything starts as a pencil or ink piece first.

My payment options tend to go by the hour, depending on the subject and size, and I tend to work quickly. You may have to give me some time when it comes to a inked drawing, and again if you want color, but it can be done. I am setting my rates here pretty squarely, regardless of what I may have charged anyone in particular in the past:

For a basic, small illustration in pencil (half-page), $30. Adding color adds $10.
For a larger, full-page illustration in pencil, $60. Adding color adds $20.
For a small, half-page ink illustration, $75. Adding color is $15.
For a larger, full-page ink illustration, $150. Adding color is $30.

Increasing page-size or virtual size, such as double page size, doubles the cost, so a double page pencil piece will cost $120, while a double page ink will cost $300. Ink is, as I can't imagine telling YOU double work, double time, and in many cases much more material-intensive than pencil.

All work goes through a series of roughs which involve input from the commisioner; you are not out of the picture once you tell me what you want. If you leave your work in my hands alone, beware what you get back!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAH! That said, I request half up front, and half on completion, when satisfied. I usually give about a week for completion of the work, less if it is simple such as a half-page. If you want two commissions, such as two figures or renderings of whatever you wish, I can compose these as a single illustration, in which case it operates under the full-size criteria, or as two separate illustrations; two smaller figures for a half-page does take longer to compose, and depending on size and medium adds extra to the piece:

For additional figures, characters, creatures, etc. -
$5 for half-page pencil, $10 for full-page, $20 for double.
$8 for half-page ink, $16 for full-page, and $32 for double.

You may communicate with me here via a note (keep it private!) or via email: qi_leong AT hotmail DOT com. I am usually available throughout the morning or evening.

Some people here are aware of my blog, some are not. I spend most of my time posting crap there, and shunting some of the illustrations I prepare here and there.

The Bite Stuff: qilong.wordpress.com/

If you care to follow, you will know that I've also been spending some time trying to answer the question about whether dinosaurs had "lips" or "cheeks," a common feature of illustrators and reconstructors for paleontology. Lately, scientifically informed illustrators like Crash McCreedy and Tyler Keillor have been rendering their dinosaurs without "cheeks" and without "lips" in the mammal sense, but rather with "lips" in the lizard and snake sense, structures that have no muscles in them, and were thus immobile.

I've gone into quite a lot of detail about this on my blog, beginning with

"Making Lip of It" qilong.wordpress.com/2011/09/1… , then

"Support for a Lipless, Cheekless Dinosaur World" qilong.wordpress.com/2012/09/0… , then most recently

"Cheeky Commentary on Ornithischians" qilong.wordpress.com/2012/09/1… ,

where I specifically talk about taking the cheeks off ornithischian dinosaurs, which makes them look a little funny. I am not the first person, nor the only one doing this generally, but I'm making a public stink about it because there is real important need in getting our artists informed about the biology. You're all smart enough to do it! Anatomy is an important first step to dealing with dinosaur art, because it is the only way you will know to tell you that that dino "looks real." You need to know WHY. Part of that is knowing also that we don't have all the answers now, but there are several philosophical techniques that help us approach the data, and scientific methods in discriminating "true" from "false" with that information.

So I've had something of an opinion on whether some fossil animals had lips, specifically some theropod dinosaurs.

It's taken some time, but after rendering a piece of art (qilong.deviantart.com/art/The-…) and painting Joker's lipstick all over it (qilong.deviantart.com/art/A-Jo…), I've set down my argument in regards to lips (here: qilong.wordpress.com/2011/09/1…).

Enjoy.