Aardwolf

80s blast: POWER LORDS

Designed by Wayne Douglas Barlowe.  I am not making this up.

Random dinosaur art by Wayne Barlowe.

Barlowe is an acclaimed science-fiction and fantasy painter who first achieved notoriety with his book Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials (Workman Publishing Company, 1979) which contained detailed illustrations of some 50 different alien races from science-fiction literature. Barlowe has also worked as a creature designer on a number of Hollywood films including HELLBOY (2004, Dir. Guillermo del Toro) , HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY (2008, Dir. Guillermo del Toro), AVATAR (2009, Dir. James Cameron) and most recently PACIFIC RIM (2013, Dir. Guillermo del Toro).

In the 1990s Barlowe collaborated with paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson on two books; The Horned Dinosaurs (Princeton University Press, 1998) and the children’s book An Alphabet of Dinosaurs (Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc., 1995).

Dobson, a theistic-evolutionist, was notoriously skeptical about the supposed evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds and as a result none of the dinosaur painted by Barlowe have feathers (except for the Velociraptor which sports a spotty mohawk of proto-feathers).

Nevertheless, Barlowe gets credit for making his dinosaurs extremely colorful and placing them in naturalistic settings not limited to scenes of combat or predation.

1) Ceratosaurus 2) Chasmosaurus 3) Iguanadon 4) Leptroceratops 5) Tyrannosaurus Rex 6) Oviraptor 7) Gallimimus 8) Velociraptor

Pteradactylus by Wayne Barlowe

I’ve posted BAKATAK, THE BRUTAL BACK ATTACKER before but let’s really take in these “Power Lords” villains

You got a guy whose entire back flies off as a weapon

A guy who sprays water out of the middle of his chest, of all the random-ass places to spray water from

A guy whose torso just spins around

And finally an evil “master of disguise" with his four possible faces and adjustable heights.

GUARD: “Wait, aren’t you DISGUYZOR, THE DEADLY DECEIVER? I mean literally only your tiny face is different, how do I know that’s not possibly some sort of ruse? A “disguise” if you will?”

DISGUYZOR: “What? Psshh! What???? No! Pffft! No! What!? You’re crazy! That debonair ladykiller? Me? PFFFT. No! That awesome genius is a whole seven inches taller, AND his sexy tiny face is different”

GUARD: “Oh, right, my apologies sir, but be careful! DISGUYZOR might be around and he’s a DEADLY DECEIVER. The last guy also said he was “really loaded” and “can do a rad backflip” too, which also sounds pretty dangerous. You kind of look like him.”

Read an interview with Power Lords designer Wayne Douglas Barlowe.

“Cathedral Head” from Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

This is what happens when a Villar from Thype mates with a human.

That's a niche joke, even by Tumblr standards.

"Cathedral Head" from Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

Styracosaurus albertensis by Wayne Barlowe || click the image until you get the high-res (and I mean high-res) version.

“Watching Wayne Barlowe draw is an intriguing experience. Wayne sets down the lightest of pencil lines as a guide and then, without hesitation, begins the meticulous process of rendering the most astonishingly detailed pencil drawings. As his preparatory lines are so light as to be practically invisible, watching the drawings materialize is akin to developing black and white prints. They simply appear, as if the pencil was a scalpel, cutting away the paper to reveal the images underneath.For someone like myself, who has not the slightest clue where a drawing is going when he begins, there’s something alchemical about Wayne’s expertise.”   ~ John Howe, illustrator.

Reblogging here because I would feel wrong calling dinosaurs sci-fi art.  I love styracosaurus.  I had a toy of one as a kid, but could never remember its name.  I just called it "triceratops' cousin."