The Idaho Museum of Natural History did a Facebook post where they showed off their new trucker hat by putting it on fossil mounts around the museum, and when I saw it, I just had to draw the actual animals modeling the hat. I think my favorite is the Oryctodromeus looking like a little kid wearing a too-big hat.

I don't draw normal paleoart.

 Not sure why anybody thought building a town on Cinnabar Island was a good idea.

I was honestly really sad when I got to Cinnabar in Gen I and found the entire place destroyed except for the Pokémon Center. Although, looking back, I suspect the developers did that because they had to cut some corners on Gen II Kanto to get it to fit onto a Game Boy cart. (I'm still secretly holding out for some ridiculously massive Pokemon game where you can visit all the regions.)

 Including their own development team in most of the Pokemon core series games is such a fun Easter egg that Game Freak throws in. I love when game developers don't take a game entirely seriously.

My latest ridiculously overambitious project: an amigurumi Gigantoraptor with its nest! Since I'm going to be a guest at Fall Fossil Fest this year, I thought it would be fun to put together an amigurumi of one of Idaho's native dinosaurs. I love oviraptorids and this was a great excuse to make an adorable plush of one. Ever since I started doing amigurumi, it's been a goal of mine to design some scientifically accurate dinosaur plushies--nothing against the sort of generic green cartoony dinosaur plush patterns you see elsewhere, but as a pedantic nerd I was craving more.

 This fella was a lot of work, and honestly there are places where it didn't turn out perfect--the neck is too thin and too droopy despite a pipe cleaner insert, so I think for future dinos I'll make the neck thicker and try to stuff more rigidly. The arms/wings are also pretty flimsy, so I think next time I'll make four of each wing and sew them together with stuffing in the middle. It also didn't turn out perfectly symmetrically... but honestly I've been really tired lately and I'm pleasantly surprised it turned out as good as it did. I think the head is absolutely adorable though.

For the wing and tail feathers, I attached, tassel-style, some Lion Brand Homespun, which is a notoriously flimsy yarn made of countless tiny acrylic strands. Terrible for amigurumi... unless you brush it out into some beautiful feathers! I love finding creative ways to use scrap and found yarn.

Honestly I don't think this turned out too bad for a first go! I learned a lot that I can apply to other dino species moving forward. My secret goal is to just create an amigurumi Jurassic Park in my house. Except all the dinos are friendly and well-fed.

If you want to make one of these for yourself (or order one from me!), you can buy the pattern or place an order for a plush in my amigurumi shop!

 Where does all that money from Pay Day come from, anyway?

 This was actually a joke the developers themselves put in! An NPC in Celadon City south of the Celadon Department Store says this, poking fun at how the brick pavement pattern in the open area by the department store is pretty disorienting when you're looking at it on a tiny Game Boy screen.

Oh, the old-school days before you could play 3D games on a handheld console.

 The whole point of this joke hinges on the assumption that people remember the small detail that in the Gen II games, when you take the Magnet Train, your character bounces up and down while riding the train. I can only take this to represent the player character bouncing with glee at using mass transit.