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« on: August 12, 2007, 05:42:46 AM »
Well, since I was littel I've always had this interest in evolution, in prehistoric animals and how they came to be, how we came to be, etc. Of course at that age I found it all very confusing and it took me years to get a mental concept of what evolution of species actually means. But of course when I did, it made it all the more fascinating. Even now I hope to pursue biology as a career path, though nowadays not really knowing if there will be any opportunities for me in the area of evolution... I'm not even in university yet and won't be for another two years, so I actually still know very little about evolution.
But this is just a little non-serious idea which has been 'evolving' itself.
When I was in high school, having a hard time socially I'd seek comfort in drawing. I'd draw all sorts of things, but one thing suddenly showed itself in my drawings. What's sad is I don't have these drawings any more, probably threw them out, I was only 15 after all, but oh well. I'll tell you about it anyway.
I would take an animal, draw a thumbnail picture of it in the corner of my A4 sheet of paper. It would be something simple yet successful, like a rat or a lizard. I'd then give it a number (number 1). Underneath it, I'd write down 'AGE 1'. A bit like a few thousand cycles in an evo sim. Under AGE 1, I'd draw what the first animal could evolve in to - a few species, and again, I'd number them - 1, 2 and 3. Then I'd write under those 'AGE 2' and I'd make evolved forms of the AGE 1 animals.... and it'd go on until there were almost hundreds. This kept me amused...
Unil I began to learn more about evolution, the causes of evolution, I then realised I needed extinctions and environments, so I started drawing maps with habitats, making my drawings bigger, often starting from scratch several times over realising the faults in my previous pencil sims, and even starting to design their skeletons with little knowledge of their skeletal structure, so I started searching up on skeletons of various animals as references, and it all started getting bigger and more complicated as I strived to make it more real and correct.
Now I'm working on a 'pencil sim' which I started a few months ago, where I took seymouria baylorensis (an ancient amphibious animal) and started evolving that with the same vegetation types, fish and invertebrate life and climates of real Earth history, and started the sim at millions of years ago, not just AGEs. I started it at 280 mya seeing as that's when seymouria is thought to have lived. The only thing different now is I use a made-up map, not Earth's prehistoric world map. For each species I create I have four pages of work - A written description, a skeleton, a sideward illustration and a natural pose illustration (illustrations coloured on photoshop). I've not got anything spectacular yet - still on 274 mya, and most species I have are still very amphibious/lizard-like in appearance, even a couple reverting to fish-like.
The reason I'm posting this is because I've been looking for feedback but haven't had much luck. People I know in real life are either disinterested, baffled, or uncomfortable with my work. I've posted them on deviant art, but again, nobody can give a constructive review.
So before I actually post any here, I have a few things to ask: Would anyone be able to review? Would anyone be able to tell me where I'm still doing things wrong, or right, when I do post them? What do you think of this idea in general? And would you consider doing anythig similar?
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