You are about to see a crayon-colored zine about prehistoric animals.
This project evolved from both science and imagination. In some areas of historical study, imagination strengthens science — after all, what is paleontology? That is not the case for this zine. Here, the act of imagining personality types and life histories of prehistoric animals has never been more inaccurate and ethically wrong. You will see an alienation of facts, a bare-bones of biology, and a sprinkle of what seems to be real information. I did not start this way, but here it is, waxy crayon marks and all.
The History
I have never knowingly made a zine. I did not call what I made in elementary school "zines;" poorly folded vibrant construction paper with the barely visible shine of graphite under fluorescent library lights, telling stories of woe and adventure with stick figures and as many words as I could cram onto one square inch of tiny paper. I am not sure why I purposely made them so small, but I remember these tiny stories pouring out my pockets and backpack and classroom desks. When I later found how small I could make an origami frog, I became a menace to the trees that make sticky notes.
Due to my fascination with all things tiny and artistic, it is inevitable that I fell into a wormhole of zines on the Internet. When the zine trend was reborn during the COVID-19 pandemic, I had a sort of subconscious devouring of zine content — I never thought, "Oh, I could make one of these," I just continued to screenshot and save and imagine collections of my collages or digital art, forgetting that those "collections" were really very simple to make. Given the opportunity to create whatever I wanted to, a zine was a simple choice, and one that I was (I am) excited about. I wanted my project to be a focal point of authentic zine creation: amateur, hand-drawn, playful, and strange. This is where my love of all kinds of art met with my love of learning.
The Science
It's not unpopular to want to be a marine biologist when you're a kid. I didn't have that phase when I was in elementary school or middle school — I entered my "I LOVE SHARKS" t-shirt era later, in high school. I always loved animal documentaries and books, but my love for all kinds of animals, particularly the scary predatory kind, reached a new fervor. I was obsessed with sharks and whales, and learning about the shark's long withstanding battle with evolution was like opening an entirely new door to the animals that I could study.
At the University of Michigan, I committed to my history major and even snuck an anthropological biology class into my schedule when I could afford to. I started watching Comedy Central's Drunk History and Weird History on Youtube during leisure time, and then I formed a loving relationship with PBS Eons. Since my sophomore year of college, I have spent a lot of time with prehistoric animals: drawing them, writing poetry about them for class, telling my friends about them, texting my mom about them, and following any new archaeological finds closely.
This zine compliments any complaints you may have heard about paleoart. "Too colorful?" I can't imagine a world where a sabertooth tiger couldn't possibly be barbie pink. "Too many feathers?" I don't know enough about ancient crabs to comment. "This is bad art?" I never claimed that I was trying to make it good!
Paleoart (illustrations of prehistoric flora and fauna based on scientific findings and analysis) has evolved through many stages of paleontologist confusion. Each era of art is different from the last, ranging from skeletal and shrink-wrapped and out of order to muscled, feathered, and mystical. Archaeologists, paleo-artists, and educators have tried recreating animals from preserved bones, tissue, and trace fossils for centuries, and for most prehistoric fauna, we will never know for sure what they looked like or how they behaved. This possibility of inaccuracy was exemplified during the shrink-wrapping debacle — one of the earlier eras of paleoart consisted of animals that were nearly skin and bones, with little to no extra mass consistent with our modern animals. Since then, most artistic rendering attempts to avoid shrink-wrapping species, and some artists even create satirical shrink-wrapping of modern animals to show us where we may have gone wrong in history (and where not to go again).
I started my project with an intention of education and I quickly found that I had so much more fun when I was making up experiences and personalities for the animals. My zine plays with the idea of paleoart. There is perhaps a drifting scent of attempts toward accurate paleontology, but I guarantee the full flavor will not be there. Here, I attempt a video game version of a bestiary and open the doors to a closet of curiosities (the cabinet's weird, messy, younger brother).