What’s the point of writing a fantasy novel with dinosaurs if you can’t make toy dinosaurs fight?
Left: Corythosaurus + dude. Right: Allosaurus. Implicit: Awesome!
None. None at all.
I told you what I’d do when I got my hands on modeling clay. After Steve Kubica kindly emailed me to tell me the clay I had failed to survive the Great Purge, I went and scored some.
Then the above ensued. On – yes, that is my dining room floor.
This really is something I do to justify spending money on toy dinosaurs help me write. Yes, this really is a scene, although I rewrote it a few days ago, before I got the modeling clay, and hence had to make do with just the dino models. Which really was what I needed.
The beast on the left is, as stated, a Corythosaurus. It’s a kind of hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur. In the book it’s usually referred as a Morion, after the style of helmet. If you hit the handy link you’ll see why. (Hint: it’s the crest. “Corythosaurus” means, “helmet lizard.” Seriously.)
On your right is a big meat-eater called an Allosaurus. In my fantasy it’s more commonly called a Matador, which means Slayer (and has nothing in reality to do with bullfighting; that’s a toreador.) Or as he might say, You Can Call Me Al.
The dude is Jaume, Comte dels Flors. The title means Count of the Flowers in Catalan. He’s a Hero. Capital H. Which you might gather from the fact he’s, you know, stabbing an Allosaurus in the chest with a freaking spear.
And yes, in the book he has an actual head. We’re dealing with Plasticine and very small scale, here.
Another reason I took and posted the picture is that Steve “S. M.” Stirling, in our last writers group meet, asked if humans weren’t like pimples on dinosaurs. And the answer of course, is, some of them, sure. But not these dinosaurs. Nobody’s riding into battle on a 130-foot Amphicoelias.
Currently I’m rewriting a scene that really has me stoked: the book’s first inside view of a big Dinosaur Knight vs. Dinosaur Knight battle. After a brief, supernatural prologue the book opens with a battle, in fact a larger one. But it’s all viewed from the perspective of a bystander. This is getting down and dirty and participating.
I’m stoked because I feel as if it’s shaping up to be the bangingest battle scene I’ve ever written. Though I’m confident that once I throw a rewrite through the final battle, it will surpass this one. Still, I really am having fun with this. Walking Emma Dog along the ditch this afternoon I was declaiming a particular passage that had just come to me over and over out loud. Emphasis on loud. Fortunately there was no one else on the ditch to have me committed.
(Emma is smart: she manifestly understands a fair amount of spoken English, and also manifestly understands that most of what Daddy says is not worth paying attention to. So she was, y’know, cool. Also, she already knows I’m nuts.)
The toys will come in very handy rewriting this battle. Of course I’m not reproducing it on any complete scale, even though Dinosaur Knight contingents tend to be small, for various reasons (most of which are, “expense.”) Which is largely why I’m not doing it: these “museum replica” grade dinos cost money. Also I don’t have the time, or inclination, to make a bunch of other inch-and-a-half tall clay dudes to ride on them.
Fortunately, most of the action I’m describing is one on one. Equally fortunately, I have another hadrosaur toy, which by remarkable coincidence is the other common war-duckbill, a Parasaurolophus. Which is also called a Sackbut. No, that’s not an insult. It’s Renaissance for trombone. If I need a third combatant, I can fake it with Al. He won’t mind.
By the way, getting the shot wasn’t as easy as it might seem, given that the subjects aren’t actually alive, and can’t escape or bite me (if you don’t think a twelve-inch Allosaurus could give you a nasty bite, go back and look closer at the little fucker.) The biggest difficulty was the tendency of the spear to droop. Yes, insert dick joke here; I’ll wait. I even tried taping it in place, which probably would’ve been a good idea if only the tape had stuck to the damn dinosaur. Eventually I cheated and propped the tip of the spear – which is actually some kind of dried weed stalk from right next to my front porch – on the Allosaurus’s far shoulder where you can’t see it.
Oh, dear, I’ve gone and given the secret away. The illusion of reality is shattered!
That may not be the best angle from which to have photographed the little tableau. But I simply could not resist capturing the way Al seems to be smiling and waving jauntily at the camera. To get the full manic effect, click on the pic or, indeed, right here.
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“Also I don’t have the time, or inclination, to make a bunch of other inch-and-a-half tall clay dudes to ride on them.”
Get thee to your nearest toy store – or, if you’re lucky, “everything’s a dollar” store – and get a pack or two of mounted knights. Usually, they come with weapons (and the holes in their hands to hold them with). I understand the need for museum quality figures for the dinos; maybe the riders wouldn’t need to be of such high-quality (although “museum quality” knights are available as well – Schleich, for one brand).
The red wax around some types of cheese (gouda, for example) works well for fixing stuff in place – especially if there’s supposed to be blood at one end.
“Nobody’s riding into battle on a 130-foot Amphicoelias.”
I can imagine squads of archers doing that, either from a dorsally-mounted platform, or big (maybe wicker?) saddlebag-like things.
Good idea about the toy-store knights. Might be able to turn up some of appropriate scale. Worth a try.
Also the red wax idea’s helpful. Actually, somewhere recently I read about some kind of plastic you can mold into whatever shape you want and let it set. It’s the answer to many of my prayers over the years. Although embarrassingly I can’t remember any, because of my current (and hopefully temporary) memory malfunctions.
The really huge dinos on my world (which is called Paradise) are kind of forces of nature: dumb, powerful, and go where they want. Still, the archers-in-a-basket idea has merit. In the book’s opening the deadliest unit on the battlefield consists of archers shooting horn-bows from howdahs mounted on the backs of Triceratops. If I do use the titans, as I call the really big boomers, in combat somehow it’ll be in some exotic, foreign land.
HOWDAHS.
I knew there was a specific word for those platforms.
Hmmm… Titans with howdahs with ballistae..
P.S. – try taking your “characters” out to your garden for a few pictures…
The garden is in way too dismaying shape this year. ANother casualty of my little health faux pas.
While we’re on the subject of setting up scenes with toys and taking pictures of them…
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31326948&l=2fb655d015&id=1522440408
Cool. If a bit cryptic.
But it does demonstrate what I was saying about taking pictures of the scenes outside. Indeed, the fact that your garden is “dismaying” as a garden may make it better for Dino Rider photo-dioramas. Or perhaps there’d be another place in your yard that would work.