very nice peter, cant wait for the finished images 
Hey Minister,
Your dinos rock!
Iām not sure what youāre up to these days, but have you ever thought about authoring a book on sculpting/designing/modeling/painting dinosaurs? I think it would be a valuable resource for the art community in general.
You could cover basic dinosaur history, anatomy and morphology. The reasons certain dinos had certain features, the different types of dinos, habits, dietary, environmental adaptations etc.in accordance with why they look the way the do or whatever. Kind of background info so one could design their own convincing dinos if need be.
And combine that with your artistic workflows, particularly sculpting and painting, your design and decision making process etc. Things to remember or avoid or whatever.
And then maybe even some info on working with clients and deadlines, and how you (if you do) adapt dino designs to fit the context of whatever type of project it is your creating for (kids book, vs museum piece, vs. ābad guyā dinosaur for a film or video game or something).
This could be a badass book! Iād buy one for sure. And I havenāt seen anything really like that, except for a drawing/designing dinosaurs Gnomon DVD. It was good, but you could definitely take it up a few notches. Or even make a Gnomon DVD now that I think about it. That would be cool to. (But a book would be better).
Anyway, sorry for my rambling here - just a random thought. Thanks again for your work that I find to be a valuable source of information and inspiration.
Holy Cow fat kidā¦thats an inspired idea. I am quite flippant about my dinosaurs. I feel like I bore many people as its all I seem to do recently. There is so much more going on under the surface with how I costruct the dinosaurs. I study scar patterns on the monographs of fossils to work out muscle attatchment areasā¦thats the best and only way to accurately do this stuff.
You really have me thinking. I may just go and do an online self publish version.
In your debt forever
Great work on the dinos! I dig your Tropeognathus. very cool! 
T Rex WIP.
Okie dokeā¦this is how the latest bright young things in the world of palaentology picture Good old T rex. They have him back as a psudo predatorā¦something with upper and lower maxilla this size didnt live on left overs. All if not most therapod dinosaurs had inward facing palms. Some pretty cool digital recreations hae proved that the wrist joints were not capable of rotatingā¦soā¦in essenseā¦the hands were apparently used to hook ontoā¦or graspā¦no more downward facing hands. Im working on a feathered deinonychus that shows this and i will post images as soon as I can. Its an eye opener.
Thanks,
peter
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](http://javascript<b></b>:zb_insimg(ā161817ā,āTrex HRES FLAT low.jpgā,1,0))
Hi Dustinā¦sorryā¦I missed your comment about colourā¦yupā¦very saturated stuff here. A very talented guy called Steve Willis runs all of my renders and layers through various photoshop tom foolery. The idea is to produce very eye catching and colourful images for kids. Books are struggling to compete with video games. I personally banned my kids nofriendo machine last year.
I love my jobā¦Im sort of in a rare position to maybe inspire young dino artists of the future. Not something i take lightly.
I will be making my alpha collection available soon. Its served me really well. I also have ā¦at last countā¦158 fully detailed prehistoric creatures on my hard drive and I plan to make the mid res meshes available to people who would want them. Most have really nice topology and all have been run by palaentologists.
While Im onā¦has anyone else noticed 3.5s enhanced retopology tools?..so nice to use now. Nothings been automated like other progs but you do feel so in control of laying down topology compared to zbrush 3. Keeps with the whole zbrush spirit.
Peter
History is misleading. Put some chocolate on it 
A little more on the subject: people are messed up beings, spending time in belief they will find out the truth and know oneselfs if they study the past. let me tell you something about that. You can know yourself if you study yourself. nobody does it of course, it is the hardest job ever, and are contributing to this lie. You can know how a dinosaur moved, but what he thought and why he did certain things is a speculation and nobody alive can deny it. Perhaps they didnāt exist, what about that? And if they did indeed todayās perception destroys their meaning.
Cherub.
Please show me a tiny little peice of respect and i will show you the same. Please stay off my thread.
I respect you mister, I have to have an opposite, itās a universal law, I wouldnāt be complete without you 
Bye
Whooohoooā¦ Just got confirmation of a deal on my less than serious dino book. God bless dead dinosaursā¦God bless Pixologicā¦
Peter
Attachments
Hehehe fun! Cheers with it!
Hey nice work Pete! And congratz on that deal!
I highly look forward to the alphas you might provide soon! Thanks in advance <img src=āhttp://www.zbrushcentral.com/pixo/atn.gifā>
Yea Congratzā¦Very well deserved :).
heres a weird oneā¦Its called a tapijara and the consultant looking at it just told me i could afford to go even bigger with the crest???
OOOOHā¦is there a cash prize for getting 100,000 hits?..
Hers how the eye to eye book spreads look.
Copyrite Dorling Kindersley books.
Pete minister that is a fine spread you have there.
I have actually been trying to read the dino facts
forget the cash prize I would rather have a signed copy of the book 
Thanks scottā¦no proble. e mail me a postal address and I can get DK to post you some freebiesā¦just look out for a big package addressed to Dr scott, keeper of palaentology.
Wow! Many great updates! Great to hear about the new book deal ! Gottaā agree with Scott on the prize thing thoughā¦ 
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Iām looking forward to the alpha/tools/Wip stuff, hope youāll find the time.
Thanks for answering my question; itās a quesion Iāve asked many times on ZBC because I always feel itās taking me way too long to get something sculpted due to lack of experience.
Hi Etcher (Whats your name?..e mail me please)
I have a really stupidly quick workflow simply because I have so many base models to start with. I have zbrush OCDā¦i use it 15 hours out of 24. I do often go back to what i thought was a finished model and tweak away and add more and more detail and characterā¦nothings ever really finished and thats why i love digital art.
I can and will be releasing most of my mid res dinosaurs (Only mid res as my clients own the final detailed stuff) on my web site free to anyone who can or would want to use them. I actually cant wait to see what other people do with them. Skullbeast grabbed a simple T rex base mesh I had and made the absolute best version of a T rex that Ive ever seen. so inspirational.
pete
Holy $h*t Peter! You are producing some awesome stuff! I love the Rex, gotta be top row! and the Pterosaur is beautiful. Iām finding myself totally blown away by the stuff the palaeos keep coming up with lately, like the Theropod hand thing, gotta go fix all my models now! What a time to be in the field! Ever since I was 5 or so Iād wondered why the dinos, particularly the smaller Theropods, looked so much like birds, especially as the science at the time saw no relationship at all. The new renderings of animals with feathers and colours are a revelation, even though we know they can do no more than guess at colours and patterns. But then we thought weād never know anything about skin patterns or feathering until imprints of skin and feathers turned up and the study of brain cavities started giving us more information about the senses the dinosaurs posessed. I still canāt imagine how, but I feel certain weāll be able to fill in some of the blanks about color, pattern, and even the possible soft tissue external features like crests, combs, wattles, and other bird-like bits they might have had.
One only needs look at your gorgeous, dynamic, TRex compared to the upright, kangaroo-looking thing they used to draw when I was a kid. Between the technology and the new places being looked at, particularly China and South America, itās probably the most interesting time in the history of Paleontology. As for the on-going debate, my own guess is that Rex was a hunter capable of tackling all but the biggest sauropods, but who also happened to spend a fair bit of time eating carrion. I canāt think of a single reason why he wouldnāt fulfill almost the exact role as the African Lion, hunting dinos great and small. But given a choice between risking a fight with a dirty great Ankylosaur or scaring a bunch of Raptors off a fresh carcass, I believe heād choose the latter.
How much do you do of a spread like the one youāve shown us? Does a designer give you layout showing the species and poses he wants or is it the other way around? I love the layout and the little key/legend thing with the sizes, etc. They really do an awesome job at DK, They are so eye catching they almost look like kids books, but the depth of info they contain is brilliant. Canāt wait to see this book, whenās it coming out?
I think the book idea postulated above is brilliant. You could put all your alphas and base meshes on the accompanying disc! Although a Gnomon style tut disc would be brilliant too. I believe the one Gnomon have is one of their best sellers. If they didnāt want to do another one (although as great as that one is, its about structure and drawing, not modeling and detailing in 3D) Iām sure Digi Tutors would leap on it. Either way if it was based on ZBrush it would fly out the door!
Loving the images, keep 'em coming!!
Did I happen to mention that Iām the keeper of Paleontology at Sunshine Coast University???