This is super cool and super helpful, thank you so much for posting it!!

Thank goodness someone has done a study on it. I cringe on the kangaroo forearms every time I see them. And!!! What's so bad about fluff? Birds be terrifying. And it seems weird to have an entire period of history where no large animals had any sort of integument

It sometimes sucks knowing anatomy because as an artist when provided kangaroo arms, you have to draw them because it's how the character is.

The suffering is real, but sometimes I dontt think clients mind when you do things like you do. THey buy your art cause they want your style, and if your style includes anatomically correct dinos then?? all they can say is "plz no"

This is actually very useful and well done! and the captions made me smile. Awesome work!

look at all these beautiful dinos!!! I like mine middle, but it took me forever to get over dinos having feathers as a kid, lol. It felt so wrong after what JP taught me!

Honk

My personal preference is the realistic one.
I feel the more real it is the better it is.

i'd love for this to be resubmitted for a higher quality image ;w; its honestly so gooood
toony styles all the way tho hell yeah!! its a little too much fun adding excessive feathers xD

Done, thank you!

and thank you!! you have blessed us with this wonderful sheet that has also brought forth really thoughtful and intellectual comments that i had a joy reading through ^^
if they still existed, raptors would be my most favourite creature of all. i'm happy to see others express their passion for 'em <3

Of course! I agree, I'm learning as well. ^-^ Though, I kinda excepted to be way more off with my accuracy, hence my caution. Guess I'm pleasantly surprised!

I feel like the only one who likes the reptile Raptors the best, not that there's anything wrong with feathered ones of course, but still.

Nah, I don't think so. Most people don't even know they mighta been feathered or anything else existed. People are still shocked there is more than one species of raptor!
JP tends to leave a strong image in peoples minds and that's okay.

Given what we know of theropod ears and resonant structures relative to extant birds, wouldn't it be less of a honk and more of a infrasound rumble like cassowaries create, or a rumbling hiss like ostriches and emus (as well as crocodilians, although they're pretty far removed)?

HONK

Curious, why do their tails not bend? Is it a fairly solid bone in the tail?
Also yes need their shampoo, gesh ! lol

Well, for example, deinonychus tail vertabrae are essentially fused and movement was only possible from the base! It moves more like a ridig lever!
Though Velociraptor mongoliensis might'a had a semi-articulated tail for a little more freedom left to right, probably for speedier turning. Not anything like JP suggests though. :>

Ahh gotcha, yeah they went very reptile in JP,
I do really like this guide, its cute, it's sad how much you have to write
little notes so people do not take offense xD sensitive people these days

It was around the time where this stuff was generally being discovered. They did mention later about them being feathered here or there in the second or third movie I think?
It also gets it's freedom from having different animals mixed into them. Blue I believe has DNA of a black-throated African Monitor I believe. Then there is the mention of frog and all that.

If you look up really old paleoart, all theropods are weirdly upright like people with their tails like, bent hard and dragging on the ground. Sauropods had like turtle legs and were thought to need water to stand too I think. :,D
Discoveries have brought us far and we're likely going to see them very different in another 20 years.

Ugh, yeah. I've seen what some people fight over in jurassic park trailer comments.

Nooooooo, no no no, Ostrom's idea back in 1969 was that the tendons that connected the bones were taught and stiff, not that the bones were fused together, but it turns out that what Ostrom thought were tendons were actually abdominal ribs and not tendons at all, so the theory that they had stiff tails is kinda completely out the window when you combine that with the velociraptor fossils discovered in 1999.

Sorry, I've been reading up on this all night trying to get to the bottom of this and yeah, it turns out that stiff tails just aren't a thing.

The rods that stiffened the tail have been found in several other dromaeosaurids besides Deinonychus, although nowadays the prevailing view seems to be that these rods aren't ossified tendons, but are extensions of the tail vertebrae themselves. Here's how this trait is described in the chapter on Dromaeosauridae in the 2004 edition of The Dinosauria:

"From the eleventh caudal [tail vertebra] backward, the prezygapophyses [ridges that articulate with adjacent vertebrae] bear elongate bifid extensions that travel forward, flanking the neural arch in interwoven bundles for a distance of up to ten preceding vertebrae. This specialized caudal anatomy is observed in Deinonychus, Velociraptor, Saurornitholestes, Sinornithosaurus, and Achillobator."

However, I agree that there's some debate over how much these rods allowed the tail to bend. If dromaeosaurids preened their feathers (and the recent discovery of a "preening tooth" in Saurornitholestes suggests that they did), the tail would've had to at least be flexible enough for them to preen the feathers at the end of it.

The realistic is good for a velo, but a few "inaccuracies" here.

Well, not so much inaccuracies as controversial subjects.

The bending of raptor tails is hotly debated, but unless something has changed recently I think having flexible tails is still the more popular theory. There's fossils of tails bent into an S shape IIRC, for what it is worth.

A lot of the rest depends on species. Kicky power legs is going to be more likely in larger Raptors than smaller ones, but we don't have much to really go on there, just whatever is most likely based on what we know.

Paleontology is really an exercise in whatever seems right at the time, so striving for perfect accuracy is a bit of a fool's errand. That doesn't mean folks can't politely argue and theorize for fun, but if something seems wrong you don't have to do it in the name of accuracy, and when making fictional dinos for fun you can, of course, go crazy.

I'm all for learning more! ♥

I definitely should'a more specifically implied the broomstick tail for a deino over the velociraptor since I think it was the velociraptor that had some pretty good range like you mentioned? So bad species to put it on.
I could have been better off mentioning it was just less the floppy noodle tail JP raptors showed.

I certainly agree with the statement on striving for perfect accuracy. That's definitely not my aim and I hope I made that clear enough. Especially since I almost never draw them realistic. Though I'm definitely less JP and more realistic leaned than I was a few years ago. :>

Well the argument is typically that since Velo likely could flex its tail decently (going off igm-100/986) then the closely related deino, Dakota and utah could too, as the absence of decent fossils doing that for those species does not disprove the notion that they could going off the smaller species with the similar tail structure.

It's one of those things that is hotly debated, just like if T-rex had feathers based on its cousins or didn't based on skin samples and gigantism.

Found the specimen, IGM 100/986 is the velo with an articulated tail curled into an S shape, which doesn't disprove the earlier theory that the tail was rigid but is a somewhat strong argument against it.

I searched it up and see it! I'll be sure to note this for realistic velos if I ever get lucky enough to need to draw them.

IMO, there isn't a big difference between the second and third one in terms of realism. Scutes are preserved in several dinosaur fossils (and are also found in crocodiles), so there's nothing unrealistic about illustrating those on the parts of a dromaeosaurid that aren't feathered. There's also a lot of variation in feather complexity between one genus and another. Asymetrical feathers (that is, feathers in which the barbs are longer on one side than the other, like in modern birds) are present in Zhenyuanlong, but not in Sinornithosaurus, so it's a matter of artistic judgment whether or not to illustrate those on a dromaeosaurid whose fossils don't include feather impressions.

In terms of overall proportions, the third one is probably more realistic for smaller dromaeosaurids such as Velociraptor and Saurornitholestes, while the second one is realistic for larger dromaeosaurids such as Utahraptor.

So, my style isn't far off? I honestly wouldn't have expected that lol!
I'd love to see these more ranged feather impressions! I've seen a lot, but none that imply anything too dramatic, unless it's a microraptor or something.

this is super neat information, thank you for the enlightenment! it's honestly great to hear that our toony styles aren't too far off [i draw them similarly to the 2nd as well] its super validating and rad

One error that I've seen made really often, including in some (but not all) of Halopromise's art, is to show the wing feathers only extending down to the wrist. They actually extended most of the way down the middle finger. This is easiest to see in the fossil of Zhenyuanlong, and it's also visible in the Microraptor gui holotype specimen.

This error is so common that it's sometimes made in professional paleoart, not just furry art. Ixerin made a comic about it here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7483071/

oh omg, i had no idea! this is useful to know :0 thanks! :D

It's definitely a more recent thing I learned. Mostly through watching amazing paleoartists critique each other. That always seems to be the thing pointed out the most!
That and the general shape of the wings. I see a lot of that weird elbow tuft of feathers. Where is kinda tapers into nothing at the wrist and that's probably more of a pet peeve of mine personally.

This is awesome thank you for this

Lovely little guide ^w^ you and I share similar thoughts about these designs xP

True...
BUT BLUE, THO 💙

Yeesss I love ALL of them and everything in between. One of my biggest questions about the non pronating wrist is: WHAT was the first creature to HAVE pronating wrists?

you might like my utah^^ anyway that was interesting to see and read, nice work

From what I know, I kinda figured that your style for the second one would be pretty realistic for a larger Dromaeosaur! Utahraptors especially are reckoned to be pretty beefy and bear-like in mass, with the more recent analyses of their bone structures.

Yeah! You're the fourth person to tell me this and I honestly had no idea I was even sorta drawing that close to realistic representation through my style. I'm kinda psyched about it!

Best guide to the best danger fluffs ♥ Makes me want to finish fleshing out all the dino characters I have in my head ^w^

This is such a rad guide! Loving these different examples! You did a great job with this :D

I love this<3 I got really, REALLY into studying up on dino realism after reading Robert T. Bakker's "The Dinosaur Heresies." I know it's a SUPER old book and has plenty of inaccuracies of its own these days but it was such a fun read and really informative for me. >w>

I've really grown fond of the varieties in dinosaur drawing styles too. Though it's not as often seen, some of the more speculative and outlandish 'realistic' dinosaur interpretations can be really cool too! Things like crazy display crests or garishly large wattles and the like. Good heckin' stuff!

Aha the arms are a little insane with JP but I've always found their raptors to be more Utah/Achil - P. S. paleoartist or not you're incredibly accurate

*honk honk*