It should be said from start: these are not dinosaurs. It would be more accurate to call them “sea lizards” or “sea snakes“, but they really aren’t that either. “Sea reptile” is probably the most appropriate, but also remember that birds are reptiles. So let’s use the relevant name: mosasaur.

Mosasaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, maybe simultaneously with all the non-bird dinosaurs. Why and how they dropped out of existence is not certain, but monumental ecosystem collapse associated with the asteroid impact 66 million years ago is a fitting possibility.

I had an itch to create one digitally for a long time, and one day I finally sat down and did it. Digital modelling, rigging, texturing and shading a 3D-animal is difficult. At the time, I had an optimistic idea of carving myself a professional path towards doing reconstructions of multiple prehistoric landscapes, which I’ve done since, but I’m admittedly not that excited about 3D-rendering anymore.

Anyways, creating stuff in 3D is a bit like creating stuff out of chicken wire mixed with sowing, clay modelling, painting and knot-tying. Ironically, I’m not good at any of those things in real life. Since it’s in a digital space, you can also move around in every direction thinkable and nothing has any physical weight (though it can be computationally heavy!). In the case of the mosasaur, it started out as a cube.

Also, when you get as far as I got with this 3D-model (which is rare for me), you can do nice and colourful “passes” like the ones below. All of these are combined to create the final picture at the top of this page.

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