Last summer, I worked hard on various projects, including a dinosaur quartet card game for Magellan Verlag. Of course, I had to keep it a secret for a while, but the game was released last week! That’s why I’m excited to tell you a bit more about it!
Last summer, I received the fun assignment from Magellan Verlag to illustrate a dinosaur quartet card game for them. It was quite a challenge because drawing dinosaurs is much harder than you might think! The result is a quartet game with eight different quartets, featuring a total of 32 unique illustrations. Each quartet highlights one dinosaur, which appears in different poses. Magellan Verlag wanted a colorful quartet game, which was, of course, right up my alley!
Illustrating Dinosaurs
Illustrating dinosaurs turned out to be harder than I expected. Especially because they’re extinct, so you have to rely on reference books and what has been written about each dinosaur in encyclopedias. It was both educational and challenging. Some sources contradicted each other about what a specific dinosaur looked like. For instance, some references showed the brontosaurus with a different head than other sources. So, it was a project that required a lot of reading and research. In the process, I’ve become a true dinosaur expert ;-)!
Counting Symbols and Background Colors
Besides the set of dinosaurs, it was also important for this project to design a different counting symbol for each quartet and give the cards a solid, bright-colored background. This makes it easier for younger children to play the game. For example, a child can refer to the yellow cards or the footprints instead of the dinosaurs name.
Each symbol was carefully thought out. For the T-rex, it was quite simple: a bone, because it’s a carnivorous dinosaur. The brontosaurus got a twig (since it could reach branches with its long neck), and for the mosasaurus (an underwater dinosaur), a jellyfish seemed like a perfect fit.
Different Poses
Each card in the game is unique. Each quartet includes a dinosaur eating, a parent with a baby dinosaur, a sleeping dinosaur, and an “action pose”. Drawing these was quite challenging because some dinosaurs are simply better suited to a horizontal canvas than a vertical card. Filling the cards nicely without leaving too much “empty space” was tricky. But thanks to the different poses, the cards turned out to be so much fun to look at.
In short: it was a very challenging but enjoyable project to work on. I’d like to thank Magellan Verlag for the collaboration! If you’re interested in buying the quartet game yourself, it’s available in both German and English on Magellan Verlag’s website:
