As we all know, summer means life-sized robot dinosaurs! This year we had a Dinos Alive exhibit in Oakland, and the ongoing Dinos Rule! installation at the San Francisco Zoo. I’ll show you some big montages first, then individual spreads below the fold.

Dinos Alive was an indoor exhibit with crazy colored lighting and some quirks in the dinosaur design, so I did a fair bit of revision and invention in the drawing process.

Dinos Rule! has been extended into January, so I’ll be going back again. The dinosaurs are state-of-the-art models constructed by Dino Don, Inc., and they’re displayed outdoors in the SF Zoo’s gardens, so they didn’t need much reinterpretation.

Right, let’s see those full size…

May 27: The initial exploration.

A little research break! I also studied up on Mesozoic vegetation so I could make the backgrounds a little more era-accurate.

June 17: A second pass. Then my attention turned to…

July 2: My first look at Dinos Rule!

July 15: I was troubled by my impression that the Brachiosaurus was undersized, since all the rest of the models were scrupulously size-accurate. So I went back and attempted to do a rigorous scale comparison.

August 4: Focusing on the last part of the exhibit trail, to which I’d previously given short shrift.

September 3: A farewell visit, before they extended the exhibit. I’ll be back, dino-friends!