The Dinodyssey

The Dinodyssey

Gorgosaurus libratus

Gorgosaurus was the dinosaur I created for my Graduation Project. Gorgosaurus is a large tyrannosaurid as well as a very recognizable animal. However, large tyrannosaurs are usually shown as screaming monsters (chasing Jeeps), which isn't a realistic depiction of any living animal at all. Inspired by one of my favourite books, All Yesterdays, I decided to fucus on the idea of creating this very recognizable monster as a sleeping beauty. With that image in mind, I started my Graduation Project.

Whilst working on Gorgosaurus, I quickly realized that my sleeping giant was getting quite boring, especially compared to a Jeep-chasing monster. Trying to make the setting more interesting, I thought it would be fun to give the dinosaur some more character. I did this by giving it hay fever! Gorgosaurus ended up sneezing every once in a while, which led small birds on its back to get scared and fly away.

The most challenging part of Gorgosaurus were the feathers. Since Gorgosaurus' skin is very similar to that of chickens, I wanted it to have feathers. In addition to the scientific accuracy, feathers also give the animal an extra layer of royalty, which fitted very nicely with the theme of Gorgosaurus being the king of the valley. 

The final concept art was created by Luca Mauro and I think it turned out amazing. I did the modelling, animation, and implementation myself and I also created the environment in Unreal Engine 5 using Megascans.

To make the dinosaur as scientifically accurate as possible, I created its bones, muscles and fat before I sculpted the creature. Besides this giving the best looking result, it also let me explore Blender at my own pace, as this was the first (non-donut)project I did in Blender.

Stegoceras validum

Stegoceras was the first dinosaur I implemented in the world of The Dinodyssey. It's my favorite dinosaur, so I wanted to build the world around this little creature. My favorite part was figuring out its animations: Stegoceras has very similar hips to birds, so I studied lots and lots of chickens to get its movement just right.

I love Unreal and I think it's astonishing how much I could do as an artist without a programming background, but implementing all the different animations for Stegoceras took me approximately 300 years. That said, I was very happy with the end result and I was even happier when I thought of the great plan of having the next dinosaur sleep... And lay still... And do nothing ...

The first version of The Dinodyssey only had one dinosaur, but I still thought it was a great success. The game actually had two species of dinosaur, as I filled the map with birds (dinosaurs!) and other small animals such as beetles. The player was also able to freely take pictures and whenever the player got close to one of the animals, a narrator would tell them about it, just as if they were in a documentary. I made all the creatures myself and I wrote the narrative, so in the end I felt like I really made my world come to life.

Lambeosaurus lambei

Lambeosaurus lambei is the last dinosaur I implemented in The Dinodyssey, but I only started working on it after I had graduated. Working on Lambeosaurus was extremely hard for me. I had a great run with my Graduation Project and I really loved HKU, so when all that was over, it really was... over. When I started on Lambeosaurus, I had just pitched my game to Naturalis (a Dutch natural history museum). They were extremely enthusiastic, so I felt like I was on top of the world. With all of that positive energy I started with Lambeosaurus, but I quickly burnt myself out. 

I didn't want the new dinosaur to be inferior to the ones I had made before and I also wanted to work faster and faster. Because of my high expectations, I was remodelling and remodelling the basemeshes of Lambeosaurus, as I kept feeling it wasn't up to standard. With this slowing me down, I forced myself to put more and more hours into it, just so I would finish my project.

Forcing myself to work more and more hours had a counterproductive effect. I kept becoming less productive and, in hindsight, the details I was focussing on don't seem all that important to me, anymore. All dinosaurs considered, I spent most time on Lambeosaurus and I think it's my worst work, yet. However, it was definitely on of the most educational periods of my life. Despite it not really being a great technical achievement, I'm still very proud of this project as I just learnt so much from it.

Today, I feel like I'm a lot more acceptant towards myself and I have a better feeling of where my strenghts and weaknesses are. I also gave myself a lot more time to accomplish my dreams, which means that I feel like I have more time to learn and reflect. Reflection is one of the things I miss most from being a student, but I also learnt that I can, given time, reflect without an educational institution. 

Right now, I feel more productive than ever, despite not even coming close to the hours I made during the time I was working on Lambeosaurus. I'm very happy.

The concept art for Lambeosaurus was done by Luca Mauro. I really liked the idea, but since Lambeosaurus was only supposed to be an animal that the player would see in the background, I wanted to exaggerate some of its features. This led to me messing with the basic shapes a lot, which cost loads of time.

Triceratops horridus

The animal I'm currently working on is Triceratops. Unfortunately, it's not finished, yet. Another unfortunate fact is that Triceratops didn't live during the time The Dinodyssey takes places. However, I still wanted to show it, as it's been a lot of fun working on it and I think it shows a nice bit of progression.

Naturalis is the greatest museum in the world, because they have a "live science" center. There, scientists work with the bones and rocks that will be part of a future exhibition. The great thing is that you can ask these scientists everything, so they were very helpful in the process of creating my version of Triceratops. I hope they didn't find me too annoying, but I definitely thought they were great.

Like with Gorgosaurus, I worked from the inside out. So far, I've made great progress and I'm very happy with my time management, as I work rather efficient and I feel very productive. I think the sculpt looks fine already, but I want to give my Triceratops crested porcupine like bristles at the beginning of its tail, so I'm very curious about that. I want to colour it like a red river hog, so there's much to look forward to!

Thank you so much for reading! It was a very healing experience for me to write this all down, so now I just hope it didn't take you multiple weeks to read this whole adventure. Anyways, thanks again and feedback is greatly appreciated!