New ways to fund – the artists rise

OK, just so you know, I am going to keep bludgeoning you with stuff about the Daspletosaurus project till it’s funded. Please do spare a few pounds / euros / dollars / rand / gold pieces if you can, even a little goes a long way when everyone contributes. It only takes a few moments and makes a big difference.

However, while any funds at all will help me out, I can appreciate that maybe you want something in return (other than the opportunity to fund some awesome science and have me blog it to death). Well I’ve been really touched by the responses of some of my friends in the palaeoart community and people have risen out of nowhere to help out enormously.

First off is David Orr of Love in the Time of Chasmosaurus fame. Designer of this superb logo (the details are great, he’s used the flag of Alberta as an outline, used Darren Tanke’s field hammer in silhouette, and stylised stratigraphic marks from a paper on the Dinosaur Park Formation as a background), David is now offering various pieces with this on his Red Bubble Shop (most notably T-shirts). Profits go to the project fund and obviously, a hue thank you from me for this.

While David was still finalising this and getting the links up, I got a message from Brett Booth offering to do me some dinosaur-themed comic art to auction for the project! Regular readers will know Brett from his interview here and his blog Carnosauria. However, comic fans will know his work on X-Men, Teen Titans and most recently as the new artist for Nightwing, that’s some CV (and yeah, he’s filled in on Batman and Spider-Man over the years too). Starting with this effort of cannibalistic Daspletosaurus being observed by Ka-Zar in the Savage Land, Brett has promised more to come including, yes, Batman in the cave with his famous trophy Tyrannosaurus. I’ll try and blog and tweet these as they come up, but the easiest thing to do is follow Brett on twitter as @Demonpuppy It’s very kind of Brett and obviously geek heaven – dinosaurs and superheroes! Get in while you can guys.

Finally, before the ink was barely dry on Brett’s sketch, I had an alert on Facebook from Julius Csotonyi (another artist who has submitted to my interviews) with an incredibly generous offer.  For the next 3 weeks only, he is donating all profits for ALL art sales on his site to the project!! So head on over to his huge catalog and take your pick. It hardly goes without saying how generous this is.

So there you have it, three artists have all generously given up their time and talents (and yes, even some of their earnings) to help me and my research out. I’m bordering on speechless (no mean feat) and delighted and excited. My sincere and deep thanks to them all, and I hope people take advantage of this. Sure, it helps me out, but damn there’s some cool stuff there.