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Jabrosky's Crimes Against Fantasy Art

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Jabrosky

Banned
Some more images of my heroine Sekhotep:

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Viewed from behind

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Dressed for war

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Casual/recreational outfit (yes, that is a primitive basketball she's twirling on her finger)

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Sekhotep hanging around her palace
 

Gurkhal

Auror
I see some more goodies. I have to say that I find the first one the nicest, very sexy although I don't know if that was what you intended.

In the second one I don't know why, but I think that adding a weapon or so to it would probably have benefited to make her look more warlike. Just my thoughts, of course.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Yeshua of Nazareth (aka Jesus Christ)
I’m not Christian or any other type of religious person, but occasionally I do like to draw Biblical characters like Jesus. I guess it’s because I like going against the artistic orthodoxy of making them look European and instead color them as olive-skinned Middle Easterners like Arabs, which I believe is how they actually looked.

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Pharaoh of the Sun
Another Sekhotep portrait, albeit one with a lot more shine than usual. The multiple earrings have a East African Turkana inspiration (In case you haven't noticed, I love mixing ancient Egyptian and sub-Saharan African cultures in my art).

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West African Jungle Huntress
I've chosen to take a break from my Sekhotep project to work on another original character and story. I don't have a name for this particular heroine yet, but she is another variant of the "dinosaur-hunting jungle girl" archetype that I love almost as much as I do my Egyptian and Nubian matriarchs. However, this time she's not a generic Stone Age chick in animal-skin garb, but instead comes from a culture with a coastal West African flavor (think along the lines of Dahomey, Yoruba, or Ashanti). In fact her weapons' blades were designed using ancient Beninese swords as an influence. I have a lot of characters who are either Egyptian, Nubian, or generically tribal, so I wanted to try a West African heroine for once. West Africa is the origin of most Afro-Diaspora people like African-Americans after all.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Dino-Proof Wall
If you're going to build a city in a prehistoric jungle, it should go without saying that you need preventive measures against hungry tyrannosaurs and raptors. I haven't decided whether this wall is entirely made out of dried mud-brick or if it has a stony core, but either way its architecture has a vague West African inspiration. Of course I did pick the color scheme from Jurassic Park's visitor center though. The skull mounted above the gateway belongs to a Pentaceratops, a chasmosaurine ceratopsian like the more famous Triceratops.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Triceratops Ivory
My unnamed pseudo-West African dinosaur huntress lugs around an ivory horn harvested from a Triceratops she killed. Ceratopsian ivory is an expensive luxury due both to laws regulating hunting and the inherent danger of procuring these dinosaurs’ horns, but it can make for a beautiful and durable carving material.

(I actually don’t know if ceratopsian horns had ivory sheaths. We do know the horns had bony cores (those are what you see on fossil skulls), but whether these horns were ever covered with ivory, keratin, or whatever may remain a subject of speculation for some time.)
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Dinosaur Jungle
And this is where my black dinosaur huntresses do most of their grocery-shopping. Since it's verdant, tropical, and receives frequent rainfall throughout the year, I'm calling it a jungle for the time being, but I am not sure if it could be properly called a rainforest. The problem is that the trees here don't really form a high, closed canopy like most true rainforests, instead being widely spaced out among a rolling sea of undergrowth. Nonetheless such an environment should prove ideal for large dinosaurs who need both space to move around and lots of foliage to munch on.
 

Scribble

Archmage
Jabrosky! Wow! I love the expression in the eyes of your heroine figure! In her eyes you capture a very... hard to define look that somewhere between pride, worry, defensiveness, disdain... that brings her alive. Well done.

Your dinos and plants also kick ass.
 
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Jabrosky

Banned
And now for something silly and cartoonish...

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Sea World Does Dinosaurs
In the unlikely event that we ever bring back the Mesozoic dinosaurs, I bet you good money that Sea World is going to set up a T. Rex show. Forcing bloodthirsty, big-game-hunting apex predators that weigh multiple tons to perform tricks before a live audience sounds totally like their thing.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Robin Hood Reimagined
In the depths of antiquity, the Romans have invaded the Germanic country of Angeln. After they slaughter his father Chief Locksley and their village, young Robin escapes to the Sudanese kingdom of Kush where he trains to become a warrior alongside the wise and beautiful Meritamun. With the help of a wise-cracking priest and a band of redeemed rogues, Robin and Meritamun must liberate the Anglic people from Roman oppression. But first he must face his fears and ask himself whether vengeance is always the right path.

The protagonist of our story, Robin is an Anglic warrior whose special affinity for archery goes back to his childhood. After his father Chief Locksley dies at the hands of Roman general Gaius, Robin travels to Kush to train and prepare himself for revenge. For all his proficiency with the bow and arrow, Robin struggles with hand-to-hand combat and fears getting to close to his enemies. Though he suffers from a short temper and vindictive personality, Robin does have strong empathy for the less fortunate.

Author's Note: This is my re-imagining of the mythical character of Robin Hood. I admit this is a tentative redesign for him, as he looks a bit much like a blond Conan with a green skirt here, but I am proud of the pose.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Meritamun or Maid Marian
Robin’s faithful companion and love interest, Meritamun is a Kushite martial artist whose beauty belies her lethal agility and skill with the spear. Smarter and more even-tempered than Robin, she resents having to help him get out of his own trouble all the time, but nonetheless believes she can steer him back onto the right path. Later generations will remember her as Maid Marian.

Author’s Note: Another Robin Hood reimagining, this time for his love interest Maid Marian. Of course I had to make her a warrior who fights alongside Robin instead of the traditional damsel in distress (an archetype I don’t care for anyway). Choosing a distinctive color for her clothes was a challenge, but I went with the purple scheme used for the Maid Marian in Disney’s old Robin Hood cartoon.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Meritamun the Spear Mistress
When I first created the Kushite warrior lady Meritamun, I intended her to function mainly as a love interest and fighting companion for one of my male leads. Since then I have grown interested in her as a character in her own right and wish to give her more depth than your standard female love interest.

Meritamun belongs to a quasi-religious, autonomous order of highly skilled martial artists analogous to the Shaolin Monks of our world’s China. She joined this order after losing her family to the predations of a feudal lord, but she is motivated less by a hunger for revenge than an idealistic desire to make the world a safer and more orderly place. Her bad experiences with feudal authorities have made her a staunch advocate for politically re-unifying the land, which she believes will bring about peace once and for all. This attitude contrasts with many of her fellow warriors who fear that a powerful singular government will take control of their order and use it as an arm to suppress the people.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Re-designed my dinosaur-hunting chick to give her a more Stone Age hunter-gatherer vibe. Her name's Yejide and she hunts with two friends named Nkiru and Chinwe (neither shown here). Her story will have something to do with hunter-gatherers confronting civilization.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
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Yejide Don't Trust You
My original heroine Yejide, a Stone Age huntress who lives in a prehistoric jungle, gives off an expression of suspicion. At least it looks like suspicion to me. Either way I think she looks especially beautiful here.

If you’re curious, the green strips of cloth she’s wearing are supposed to be dinosaur hide.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
Couple of dinosaur ones for the morning:

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Brachiosaurus Takes a Drink
A thirsty brachiosaur spreads his forelegs apart to take a drink at a muddy Jurassic waterhole. I don’t know if brachiosaurs could really move their arms outward like this, but since they occupied a similar ecological niche as giraffes do today, it would make sense if they drank the same way too.

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Why You Little...

This foolhardy young Velociraptor will have to learn not to mess with fully grown Triceratops without backup the hard way. In real life dinosaurs, as sauropsids, probably didn't have the facial muscles that would allow expressive eyes like these characters, but that's the beauty of this semi-cartoon-like style. In any event it feels like ages since I last drew a Triceratops or any other ceratopsian.
 

Gurkhal

Auror
Very nice work you have got going. :). If I am to say something however is that Yejide looks more curious than suspicious to me. but that could just be me.
 

Nibbler

New Member
Dinos would have had horns not ivory

(I actually don’t know if ceratopsian horns had ivory sheaths. We do know the horns had bony cores (those are what you see on fossil skulls), but whether these horns were ever covered with ivory, keratin, or whatever may remain a subject of speculation for some time.)

Jabrosky, Ivory actually comes from the teeth of the animal. Ivory comes from the tusks of elephants, walruses, and narwhales. The tusks of these animals are actually just specialized teeth. Elephants use there tusks in gathering food (tearing down trees) and defense, walruses use there tusks to chip at the ice to keep holes open in the ice they live on and to pull themselves out of the water. Narwhale tusks are a sexual characteristic like a male peacock's tale or lion's mane. Triceratops would most likely have had horns similar to those of rhinos: a bony core with a covering of keratin (think of your fingernails). But don't despair.

Horn was widely sought after by people of all eras for many uses. Horns were used as drinking vessels, storage vessels. Medieval Europeans thought that a drinking vessel made from a unicorn's horn would neutralize all poisons. Polished horns can be very beautiful and serve various decorative uses. Horn is also a vital component of ancient composite bows. A composite bow is made of layers of wood and horn, glued together and tightly bound with sinew. A superb source of horn could be a primitive or medieval nations secret to military might. Today, rhino horn is believed to cure all manor of ailments in traditional Chinese medicine.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
I'm curious about the color scheme you've chosen for your dinosaurs. Why all the bright colors, rather than something that would blend easier with a jungle-ish environment? To my knowledge, the only animals that brightly-colored (who aren't birds, insects or, say, mantis shrimp) are things like venomous snakes and poisonous frogs, especially the latter. They're colored like that to warn other animals not to eat them, specifically because they're so toxic. But to something like a plant-eating dinosaur, unless they too are toxic, it seems like a neon sign saying "HEY, CARNIVORES! HUNT ME!"

Just my two cents, of course. ^^
 

Jabrosky

Banned
I'm curious about the color scheme you've chosen for your dinosaurs. Why all the bright colors, rather than something that would blend easier with a jungle-ish environment? To my knowledge, the only animals that brightly-colored (who aren't birds, insects or, say, mantis shrimp) are things like venomous snakes and poisonous frogs, especially the latter. They're colored like that to warn other animals not to eat them, specifically because they're so toxic. But to something like a plant-eating dinosaur, unless they too are toxic, it seems like a neon sign saying "HEY, CARNIVORES! HUNT ME!"

Just my two cents, of course. ^^
Birds are dinosaurs, yet I've never heard that brightly colored birds are less edible than others. Furthermore, big tough herbivores like Triceratops and Brachiosaurus probably didn't need to hide when they had other defenses.
 
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