tantumsconstruct

[tantumsconstruct]

Sedge Horsetails the Corythosaurus casuarius has breached the third dimension. I repeat, she’s breached the third dimension.

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It was probably an odd choice to start the comic with a party in their weird magic brain dimension, but I think it’s a neat decision. It’s an excuse to have all of the characters in the same place, and it also sets up one of the most important parts of the magic system, the collective consciousness itself. It’s basically a mind melding place where all their dreams can connect, and it also stores real objects that can be teleported to wherever one of them physically is.

We see in the next chapter that they can also teleport one another, but again only to where one of them already is. This is why they go around in teams of three. Also in chapter two, we see team Storm be teleported through a summoning wheel. Summoning wheels are rare and often ancient structures, but not all of them are as fancy as the one in Kallysia’s palace. These basically act as fast travel points for Tantum’s Construct, but someone has to wish for them to arrive for it to work. We’ll be seeing more on how that works in later chapters! For now, all you need to know is that Cheira is in charge of summoning wheel wishes and she’s very good at it. Everybody should say good job to her

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Genuinely what did the Velociraptor do? Ive toyed around with how to bring this joke back, and I can’t decide if Penta should assume every Velociraptor is the bastard who stole his cornbread, or if he’s so trusting that he doesn’t realize it’s the same Velociraptor who keeps stealing it.

Corn is one of the few modern plants that’s been brought to the dinosaur world from time-shenanigans slash alternate timeline shenanigans, so it’s a pretty big deal

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Pride and allyship is even more important this year. I’m genuinely disappointed in most of the world.

Not all of these character arcs have happened yet, not all of them know about their queerness yet!!

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Iconic page. Actually, I just realized that as far as the comic has been made, we haven’t seen Chasma do any magic other than once. I should really get on that. Light and Darkness magic are essentially the same thing in different flavors, and mostly consist of the types of things you’d assume magic would be. Invisibility, levitation, teleportation, that whole shebang.

Something else I wanted to explain on this page is that each mortal elemental has their own VEry special power. Suki’s is invading peoples’ dreamscapes (basically their minds) without consent, even while they’re awake. These special powers are very important for some things that have happened in the dinosaur world’s past.

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Honestly if I ever rewrite this I’m gonna have them just making out super grossly, like in that one Christmas drawing I made, with the art meme where they’re basically eating each other’s mouths.

Also Suki shows up here! I didn’t expect people to like her as much as they did on Instagram. It’s a nice surprise! Anyways she looks a bit off now and again until I learn how to use her body’s design. I started working on this before I had finished very much concept art for other species and other characters (Chasma’s salmon color BARELY scraped by, she was about to be that bubblegum purplish pink she was in that lip sync animation). Because of that rush, Suki looks literally nothing like a spinosaur. She just had a triangle head. Not even the iconic spinosaur crest.

Suki in the next couple pages is also why I started drawing necks on all the characters instead of most of them just having a head slapped onto a body. It’s a LOT easier to pose them and not have them look really unnatural when they actually have necks.

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Notice how Penta explicitly doesn’t know what Ceratopsia looked like, while later on Para confirms they (Chasma AND Penta) were both born there. It’s almost like… it’s important!!!

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Penta and his neutral rizz. I think Chasma likes him for his terrible jokes and emotional availability. Somewhat alarmingly I’m willing to put money on the fact that she also likes being the smartest person in a relationship. Except I said it, so that makes it true.

Did you know I made up human names for all of them?? Chasmine and Pendleton, shortened to either Penn or Pennie.

Tei, Monty, Keira, Suki, Petra, Matthew, and Marco are the others. Hilarious.

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IMPORTANT LORE LOCATION, important lore location! We’ll be seeing a lot of Ceratopsia later on, but it doesn’t look like this anymore.

I wonder if all those crystals have anything to do with the mineral elemental…

Also look at how TALL their frills are. I slowly shorten them so that they’re easier to fit into panels.

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No way guys it’s the thing it’s the wheel thing. Also look how short Penta’s legs are. I kind of augmented the art style as I went song to make it easier for characters to emote without stretching their limbs tOo much.

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Penta dreams of the color yellow. That is all.

If you’ve been reading on Instagram, there is a fixed coloring error on this page! Penta’s nose horn was originally all dark green and missing the off white stripe! That same dark green is also used on Chasma and Mapu

Completely unrelated, but I had my first electrolysis appointment yesterday and I’m going back later today! It h u r t s and now I’ve got terrible little zits everywhere! That’s not very awesome!

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I’ve gotta remember to have that Edmontosaurus regalis caricature artist show up again in the future. He’s funny. That background is Kallysia, where the next chapter takes place, but back when it was a jungle instead of a desert. In canon it’s always been a desert, but you know what I mean!

We also see some Pterygotus and Megalograptus invading this freshwater. We don’t find out yet, but eurypterids are also people, and marine people can exist in freshwater (and vice versa) to no ill effect. There’s not really a lore reason for that, it’s more of a “ah yes water thing” logic.

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Who's your favourite of the main 9?

Don’t tell my children that I have a favorite, but it’s Penta. He’s a little dumbass but he’s the sweetest thing. Not only is he the first one I created when I was like eleven or something, but he’s so dumbbitch coded that I, thE dumbbitch just adores him. I have a long history of writing protagonists with my own personality (would suggest, it makes writing easy), and it all started with the little Pentaceratops.

My other comic with the humans that I’ll make eventually (I’ve always used Tantum’s Construct as the practice version since its world is compelling enough to suffer through mid art and writing) has a protagonist named Veronica Sousa, and she has a very similar personality to Penta. In fact, she’s literally just what I aspire to be like. In a good way and in a bad way. One day we’ll be getting updates on that comedy-drama character-study type device. But for now, funny dinosaurs!!

Chasma and Tay are pretty much tied for second place, though! I feel like they’re both the most realistic characters regarding their depth and reactions, considering that they don’t share my own brain cells. Chasma’s very emotionally driven, but in a selfish way. Like how she only felt bad about Monty’s birthday because it made HER come across as a bad friend. Meanwhile Tay is basically a case study of people who can’t be persuaded by anyone but themselves. If he didn’t come to a conclusion on his own, he’s gonna keep making the same mistakes until he does.

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That’s right, your ol pal Sedge supports semiaquatic Deinocheirus theory

I’ve had to slowly stop adding paleontology jabs because they keep becoming irrelevant 😵‍💫 In the original version of the following chapter, two characters argue whether a third character was a Tarbosaurus or a Turannosaurus bataar (older refrance), which I updated into two characters arguing over whether a third character was a Saurophaganax or an Allosaurus maximus. It’s apparently a sauropod now, but Saurophaganax is already in the comic. Fortunately, I preemptively designed it to be my Allosaurus but a pallet swap!

What else is there to drone on about…? Well, those who have read further through another social medium might notice that these three are also the characters we follow for the BIG episode: chapter two. The only reason for this is that Monty and Cheira are characters created FOR this version of the story. They’re barely in the original paper version of chapter one, and have the combined personality of a paperclip. I really wanted to ensure that I knew them as characters before getting too far into the project. I probably should have done that in a pretend pitch Bible instead of making it up as I went, though! I paired both of them up with Tay because he’s one of the most developed characters, if not the most. He’s super easy for me to write for, and Monty has become a breeze as well. Cheira still evades me a little bit, and you’ll see her act a bit differently as we follow this and the next chapter, but she ends up as an anxious pick me girl who flips between having none and all of the confidence in the world, which I think makes her bounce off of my other characters very well

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Look how weirdly short Monty’s legs are. The character designs have very slowly drifted into forms that’re a lot easier to express emotion and action, and also in a direction where different groups of animals are distinguishable. You’ll see that Mapu especially suffers from my old everyone-has-a-circle-head approach. The more defined head and body shapes of my recent work are a lot better.

Back when I drew this, I remade the entire thing. The original layout was very cramped with essentially two pages crammed into one. It was a good decision to redo it, although it is still a bit darker than it should probably be!

I don’t think the characters actually confirm it in this chapter, but Monty is the only one of the main characters who is actually a child. Everyone else is an adult. I like to write them as if they’re fresh out of highschool, all still hanging out together after being a tight knit friend group for four plus years! Because of that angle, a lot of them have dated each other, and will come to date one another as well. Except Monty. Monty is either someone’s younger sibling, or some random kid who joined their group from a friendship in their school’s marching band or something.

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Welcome to chapter one, hisses!! This is a remake of a super old drawing, with all their updated designs and more developed personalities. I like looking at this picture :)

This is also the first appearance of the summoning wheel! I have a couple materials with official colors on the comic, and the wheel is made out of brass. Does brass have special properties in the Dinsoaur World? Na, but there is a Very Special Character who is themed around brass, while their

counterpart is themed around cobalt. This is a surprise tool that'll help us later.

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Woag you guys the characters the characters that that its about they are appearing before us there they are there are some of them they are sleeping on god there they are