Smilotyrannus Studies

I’m not usually one to post rough sketches, but I’ve been playing with the smilothere body designs and kind of liked the gestural quality of these preliminary studies. I’ll probably move these to Scraps before long--I’d like to start using my Scrapbook for its intended purpose, rather than simply as a repository for mech drawings. I guess I've been saying that for a while now, but I am finally starting to use it that way.

The fellow at the top probably comes closest to my original image for Tyrannofelis rex, the apex predator of the dinomammalian food web. It’s probably pretty obvious that the recent Tyrannofelis gracilis was an intended T-felis rex that never quite came together. I like these poses, but I’m still not sure about the body designs…I guess they could even be other smilotheres, not necessarily tyrannofelids.

The genus "Tyrannofelis" was recently shelved in favor of "Smilotyrannus," by the way, following Duffy (2008).