TINY MEN, TINY ELEPHANTS, AND GIANT LIZARDS! WELCOME TO FLORES!

These pages are a continuation of my current obsession with Flores man. Doing more research into it, though, and I came up on some frustrating inconsistencies. The "Dwarf stegodon" that homo floresiensis co-existed with is a funny animal. It's either a brand-new, undescibed species, or it simply doesn't fit the time period. There was a tiny dwarf stegodon around 840k years ago, but it was replaced by a stegodon the size of an asian elephant not long after that (due to lower water levels during the ice age). So either the stegodons found in the Liang Bua caves (known apparently only from juvenile skeletons) the juveniles of the still large flores stegodon, or, and this isn't totally unlikely, the juveniles of the flores stegodon dwarfed by 800,000 years of reduced resources, and probably, a new species. 

And here, after excitedly drawing all this shit, I realized (after looking at the flores man skull) that the eyes of the flores men were too far apart. But these pages definitely get the right feeling to them, in terms of jungle elephant hunts. And this is something I'll come back to, once I have a "flores man" head layout that I really like. I've already got a wicked story set up, all about hallucinating tiny men, giants from papua new guinea, and HUGE komodo dragons. It'll be tight. Oh, and about some type of stegodon - I'm not sure yet.

a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/povorot/3210259562/" title="Stegodon ambush 3 by povorot, on Flickr">

Homo floresiensis sketch

Homo floresiensis sketch
Originally uploaded by povorot

I always find it more interesting to think of the other human species that previously existed on earth in the most - well - human way possible. By depicting neanderthals and other early hominids as bipedal chimpanzees, it's much easier to think of them as animals, rather then people - which tends to make their fascinating lifestyles a little less interesting. Take Homo floresiensis, for example. A tiny race of long-armed men, hunting dwarf stegodons, big rats, and dodging titanic komodo dragons. Just that, there, is a better premise then a lot of sci-fi and fantasy being written today. Depicting them as people helps us realize that they were, in fact, people. A different species, yes, but a still human.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(an image for my brother's band)

This, surely, is a year of heavy rocking and sweet flavours. My comic, Jan and Anders, looks like it'll be published in the summer, I'm cooking up a new project... things are looking pretty good. Swing on by my flickr account to check out what's up. 

I'm feeling pretty good about this whole thing, really.