Concept Art - Stylized Baryonyx Redesign

[Design Theory]

The design goals for Baryonyx is to focus on empathizing the relation between the in-universe Spinosaurus and itself, while keeping itself to be different and unique. What the JW:FK design fails at is doing this, since it cannot be recognized as a Baryonyx and for it being close to Spinosaurus, one of the issues I found with the design despite me enjoying it. A more Baryonyx-ine shape and anatomy allows for better recognizability for the public eye. Although keeping to strict scientific accuracy isn’t a smart design move in most cases, as most Jurassic Park and Jurassic World designs tend to not do that, keeping stylization a priority in many cases. While the original Baryonyx design can and debatably did or didn’t work, I felt I could do my rendition of the design in my own way for fun.

As mentioned before, I wanted to keep consistency between both in-universe Spinosaurs. Two methods to do this is to add a bulkier skull. Some of the skull is somewhat modified, a thicker snout and jaw. What is unique is the combination of the crest which is spiked and the postorbital brow crests, similar to in-universe Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus brows. The body anatomy is mostly evened out rather than being more triangular.

What did remain consistent is the crocodilian style, coloration, and hypothetically sounds and behavior from the original design and interpretation. While the crocodilian features are not 1:1, the osteoderms, ragged teeth and mouth, and more pronounced bone ridges on the face are kept. Spinosaurus too had some similarities to this as well, although both original designs executed them differently. This allows for both to stand out to be unique from eachother.

Coloration was mainly kept because it itself makes sense for the animal in-universe. A mixture of a crocodilian coloration and traditional dinosaur coloration, being semi-aquatic/piscivorous and terrestrial. The greys and blues help sell this biological niche very well. This does apply to behavior, sounds, and color as well since it keeps that common theme. Plus personally I do love the coloration.

And for those who want more scientific accuracy in this design, that won't happen since at least subjectively to me, the design here is something I like while maintaining stylistic consistency from the franchise along with a few custom things. It isn’t meant to be the main focus for the design, so some aspects of the animal was sacrificed simply for both consistency and the cool factor (even though the original animal itself is cool). And I believe I have mentioned this elsewhere, but scientific accuracy shouldn’t be a standard held to the highest degree for design and to always judge against. I will eventually make a post about this idea of when to and not to include scientific accuracy and why strict beliefs on scientific accuracy in designs should be dropped.

Thank you for reading the design theory and description of my Baryonyx design. Hope you have a great day and hope you enjoyed this read.

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