PALEOART

     Journey through 290 million years of Earth's past in this ancient journey across the globe, getting quick glimpses at many of the planet's fascinating extinct animals. This is my final senior project as a newly graduated alum of LSU's College of Art and Design with a Bachelors of Fine Arts, majoring in Digital Art. Some of you may have had the opportunity to see this project in person at the "Glitch Gala", hosted at LSU's Digital Media Center on May 11th, where it was shown to over 200 attendees. Thanks to all who came out. Myself and close friends were so excited to put on this show for all of you.

 

Some more context about the "Paleozoa":

 

     Paleozoa is a gallery of a"paleoart" digitally painted by myself, meant to amaze, but also educate the audience. Paleoart is any art with the goal of visualizing and reconstructing earth's extinct creatures based on the latest scientific research. However, often times a lot of what these ancient animals looked like in life is largely unknown, so a paleoartist must fill in the gaps that current knowledge can't provide, frequently referencing modern animals to make the best educated guesses.

     The title, "Paleozoa", has two meanings. "Paleo" refers to paleontology or the study of "ancient life", and "zoa" roughly translates to "animal" or "organism". In other words the title is meant to represent the ancient animals featured in the project that I have done my best to recreate as an amateur paleoartist.

     The second meaning of title references the time period in which this project covers, the Paleozoic, which also translates to ancient life. The Paleozoic is a large chunk of Earth's history spanning 290 million years just after life was first speculated to have come into being. The Paleozoic is famous for its diverse, unique, and downright strange animals and it is my favorite era for that reason. The Paleozoic is also split into six distinct periods beginning with the Cambrian, followed by the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and finally the culminating in the Permian.

     The Cambrian saw the rise of the first predators, like the strange shrimp, Anomalocaris or the first vertebrates, such as the fish-like Pikaia. Millions of years later in the Devonian the first jaws evolved, like in Titanichthys, and those same vertebrates from the past evolved to eventually make their way onto land. However, especially in geologic time, nothing good stays forever, and the Paleozoic's final period, the Permian, ended with the extinction of nearly all life on Earth.

     As we can see today, life is just as thriving and diverse as ever, and for that we must thank the small handful of species that were adaptable enough to survive the end-Permian's "Great Dying". They not only gave rise to us humans, but also the most famous paleontological dynasty of all time, the dinosaurs.

Thank you for reading, and especially thank you for watching my senior project. This took the entire spring semester of 2024 to produce and I could have have done it without the help of everyone mentioned in the credits of the video. Getting to combine two interests of mine, digital art and paleontology, was so much fun to do, especially with an amazing audience to present it to. I hope to make similar content in the future as I continue to educate myself on Earth's amazing history. Thank you.