The long lasting, somewhat existing question that has probably been thought up by those who have looked into some of my stuff in the past.
What is a Dinaur? Who is a Dinaur? What is Dinaura? Why is it called Dinaura? Are you insane?!
To put it lightly, yes... to the last question.
Jokes aside, I will explain exactly what this whole "Dinaur" thing that has been surrounding me since 2018 is.
Part 1: No seriously, what is it?
A "Dinaur" is a fictional species created by yours truly. The name is basically just "Dinosaur", but with the "os" removed. As you can imagine from this, they are dinosaurs. However, they are not just any ordinary dinosaurs, they are ones from outer-space, very far away on a planet not too different from Earth called "Dinaura", which they named after themselves.
Dinaurs range in varying types. The vast majority are upright and bipedal, similar to your usual human or cartoon animal. Some walk on all-fours, some have wings etc. Some resemble real pre-historic species such as pteradactyls, while others do not resemble any kind of dinosaur.
Reville, which I named my account after, is the main protagonist in this idea of a series I want to make eventually. He is an orange, upright, bipedal dinaur who is usually friendly, but has quite a short temper. He is a rather normal individual as far as life goes, while those around him are stranger. More on him and the rest later.
Dinaura, as I mentioned before, is not too different from Earth. It has a modern-looking society that appears across the majority of the planet. The environments look similar to Earth, but the inhabitants are almost entirely different. I already covered the dinaurs, but there are also birds (who live alongside the dinaurs), robots (mainly meant for mundane or military stuff, but some life-like ones exist), and the nylaranths, who are the predecessors to the dinaurs. When the nylaranths dominated the planet, it had no name! Then, they slowly began to vanish over millennia, while the dinaurs became the dominant species and practically claimed it for themselves. Only a few nylaranths are known to still exist.
The dinaurs primarily speak English. They already know about us and the Earth, after sending a long-long-distance remote satellite which picked up information and sent it back to Dinaura. They do have their own language named Dinauran, but it is rarely ever spoken or written due to its old and complicated nature.
They also have their own religion. I have yet to write up or think of ideas about this, but there is an underworld that some believe in, ruled by the devilish Deville; a large, dark dragon-like dinaur with horns and red eyes.
Part 2: Reville Who?
As I had brought up earlier, Reville is the primary protagonist of Dinaura; the series I want to make named after the planet which this whole thing is set in. He is mostly orange, with a tan colored belly and three grey spikes on the back of his head.
During the series, he is an adult aged somewhere between 20 - 22 years old, and is trying to live his life while in the midst of finding a lasting job. He is very chill and friendly the majority of the time, but he does have
a short temper and will snap if something does not go his way. He can
get upset and even cry if things get REAL bad, even if it's just for
him.
I've yet to find a surname for him. "Reville Reptile" sounds fine and the alliteration works very well, but I feel it's a bit generic especially when he is not the only reptile-like dinaur. Perhaps "Rula" could work... assuming it hopefully isn't some bad word in a foreign language. Maybe I'll just call him "Reville Relly" for now, because I like the double-alliteration of "Re-Re" more than the singular-alliteration of "R-R".
He has a very close friend named Pecky, who is a 21 year old yellow bird (similar to a canary) that cannot speak. Sometimes, she sleeps over at Reville's house. Pecky can be somewhat nice, but also frequently unamused at specific events, and even show impatience when she has to write or type just to get something across (she usually conversates with her facial expressions, however). I currently do not have a surname for her.
Early on in the series, Reville comes across someone lonely named Robodi; a blue depressed, yet sweet robot dinaur (referred to as a "Computaur") formerly used for war, now just wanting a friend to rely onto after his former friends have gone missing in action. Initially, Reville is hesitant to keep him around, but eventually gives in after noticing how kind and clingy he is, and the two become best friends quickly. He sleeps on the sofa in the living room usually. Robodi generally struggles with most every-day tasks, due to his hands being bulky crane-like claws. When Reville leaves to go somewhere, Robodi may get lonely and suffer from separation anxiety if left at home. He is very sensitive, and can easily be upset. Robodi's eyes are yellow by default, but turn red when he is angry, sky blue if he is crying (he cannot produce tears, but he still has a noticeably sad voice with sniffling and closes his eyelids most of the way), green when really happy or over-excited, and pink when feeling loved.
Another resident of Reville's home is an old CRT television named Teethy (his name being a pun on the abbreviation "TV" and the fact he has buckteeth). When Reville bought Teethy, as he was the only item available after a store robbery, he was not aware that Teethy was engineered to be alive. When he takes him home, he switches Teethy on, and it seems normal, until the screen turns to static and shows a blue face with goofy eyeballs alongside a grin with buckteeth. Teethy can be loyal and display whatever the viewer wants, but he is also quite the prankster; fairly often he will show something the viewer does not want to watch, or outright refuse to obey them. This leads to some chaos between Reville, Robodi and Teethy. Reville even once threatens to throw Teethy out after the latter traumatizes Robodi by playing a scary movie, but eventually decides he cannot, as Teethy would need somewhere to stay, and nobody else wants him for pretty obvious reasons.
 | |
| Left to right: Reville, Pecky, Robodi and Teethy (earlier design), drawing by my other half @Cco0orn |
Because I want to keep this series down to... Dinaura (can't really say "Earth" here), and the fact it is largely a splice of life with drama and comedy, I have decided to go against adding a primary antagonist who is against Reville (excluding one-off scenarios). Should there be any villain, they will have to be against almost everyone. I probably should keep most important plot details quiet from here on, because I wouldn't want to spoil my own stories. Ha. I can say that Reville does have a family, but they are hardly ever seen and lack information for intended purposes (unless my mind decides to change, which is frequent).
Part 3: How the heck did all of this start?
The idea of Dinaura as a whole began back in mid-2018, I want to say somewhere around March or April. The very first drawing of Reville being from April 7, 2018.
I had the idea of Reville from looking at several shows and games that contain similar looking characters. A few web-cartoons and Croc were especially the main inspirations, as well as a bit of Yoshi from the Super Mario franchise (although that was more subconsciously). Originally, his name was "Redmond", due to his skin being more red at the time. I felt this name was too old fashioned, so I changed it to "Reddy", which sounded cuter and more young at heart. There was a problem by the time I switched to this name though; he was now orange because I liked the color more. After a long while of deciding, I mixed and matched several names, and came up with "Reville", which sounded snazzy and could be shortened to "Rev". At the time, I did not even know it was an actual forename, so it worked out anyways!
The very first design of Reville - then named Redmond - was quite different. Not only did he have skin that was closer to red than orange, he also had visible teeth and a very, very different snout. He also had several spikes, which at the time went all the way down to the back of his torso and even his tail. I later continuously adjusted his design to where he is today, lowering his spikes down to three, as it is easier to draw and animate.
 | ||
| The very first drawing of Reville, ever. My drawings were so cruddy, I didn't even knew what tangents were until years later! |
Before Robodi came to my mind, Reville had a different blue colored friend. He was a blue dinaur named Blugo. I never really drew him much; most of his designs remained in my head. He was very stupid and didn't really have that much character.
During this era, the series was set in pre-historic times, unlike now where it is set in the modern day. I can't even remember if it was on a different planet than Earth or not. It would have had a Flintstones touch to the structure designs. Most of the buildings would have been made out of rocks and modern appliances pretty much did not exist. The sky was primarily orange most of the time, which does not really work well when Reville himself is orange. Now, the sky color is mostly similar to what we have here on Earth.
After half a year of having this iteration in mind, it came to my realization that I could only do so much with such a setting. Pecky was created in late 2018 to make the trio, and hardly changed much at all other than her design and moody personality. Reville also went from being very upbeat to being more chill, with the usual poor temper control. Eventually I scrapped Blugo and focused more on the world around them, as opposed to just largely thinking of the characters. The world of Dinaura was changed from a boring, kinda lifeless pre-historic land to a work-a-day planet full of life and interesting characters. Not the happiest place in the universe, but still far more than what existed in my mind prior.
Robodi was created in mid-2019, and his design and personality has barely changed much since. Originally, his eyes and tail were to always be red, but I felt it made him look evil, so now those parts only turn red if he is angry. I figured that Robodi was better than Blugo in every way. He has way more personality and his design is adorable, which has made him quite popular with people who like my stuff.
Dinaura itself (both the planet and series) also had name changes over the years. Way back in mid-2018, I imagined the series to be called "Dynamite" or something similar. No reason why, I just thought it sounded cool. Later, this changed to "Dynaria", with the dinaurs originally being called "Dynars". It not long after evolved into "Dinauria", which was the name I used for the longest amount of time. Recently, I have removed the second "I" from the name, because I felt the "ia" suffix was overused (also saying "Dinauria" in some accents that can't pronounce the "n" makes it sound like a certain other word which would be embarrassing). Now it is "Dinaura" and it will remain that way for always and always.
Part 4: Behind the Scales... sort-of
I do not really have much to show right now, largely because most of my old drawings are just not good (I don't really consider myself an artist, as ironic as it may sound for a wannabe comic maker). But, I can talk about certain ideas and trivia that I do have in mind.
Reville himself was largely inspired by Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life, in terms of personality. I even imagine him to have a similar voice, but without the Australian accent (so more similar to Lazlo from Camp Lazlo!, but still not quite - maybe more or less nasally). I was also somewhat inspired by how Alfonso is in Animal Crossing: The Movie, since they are both lizard-like and fairly lazy and similar in design.
Robodi's personality was more of my own thing, I'm not sure what the inspiration would be. I did imagine his voice to sound like a sadder version of GIR from Invader Zim, even being high pitched most of the time, but never screamy or "random XD". When GIR talks normally, either just casually or concerned, usually that's quite closer to what Robodi's voice could be, rather than when he is screaming or really happy for no reason in particular.
Pecky, as stated earlier, has no voice. I don't quite remember why I gave her no voice, but it could be that I had planned for test animations using her, so I wouldn't have to find a voice actor (I don't have much money). Her personality was also largely just thought up on the fly, as opposed to being similar to other characters. I think her not being able to talk would actually create a unique dynamic within the trio of protagonists.
Dinaura (as in the series) as a whole in its current iteration is largely inspired by more down-to-Earth and life-focused cartoons, such as Rocko's Modern Life and The Simpsons. With Dinaura, I have no plans to make the characters do wacky faces, as it will detract from the stories if done too much. The series is meant to remain largely solid and quite believable in terms of what is happening (not necessarily the characters themselves, of course). The series is primarily aimed at teens and young adults such as myself, but it is not strictly for adults; a child could watch it and they should have no problem with it, although kids are not the direct target audience. I want to refrain from really obscene stuff such as really harsh language (mild language like "crap" and "damn" and a few others are fine, and also a tiny bit of blood is allowed if it gets a message across). I also do not want it to feel like a generic edgy adult sitcom. I don't have problems with them existing, but I feel like there are just too many at this point that once you have watched one, you have watched them all. A few exceptions exist, of course, but even those don't really line up with what I have in mind for Dinaura.
Dinaura would have serious topics, but nothing overly mainstream. Relationship issues, worrying about self-image, holding onto the value of friendship in the worst times etc. will be expected, but I do not want stuff such as "A.I. is replacing artists!" and "the concerns of cryptocurrency" as well as any overly-realistic politics (yuck), as people are genuinely sick of hearing about these. Social commentary may be there, but it won't be overbearing.
The font used for the Dinaura logo (currently, I only have the older Dinauria logo made) is called "Jolly Lodger". I found it when searching for alternative fonts, and I think it looks great. Yeah, it's pirate/camp themed going by the name, but it's still cool in my opinion. The font does not exist on Blogger, so I had to use a similar font for my blog.
 |
| Dinauria version of the logo, from July 2021 |
I'm still not really sure how I would approach the series, but I feel relieved getting it out of my mind onto plain text. I have had this idea for years, but my art skills are obviously holding me back (although I have improved a bit - some of my 2018 drawings are god-awful in comparison to my more recent ones). I might try to make 3D models of my characters in Blender at some point, maybe that will help with perspective, posing and shapes (getting the right shapes when drawing is a nightmare primarily because I am weak and I do not have steady hands). There is the option of making character model sheets and turn-arounds, but I figured I would want solid models of them first, which I could then use as the basis for these sheets, instead of doing it freehand and probably messing it all up. Hiring another artist right now isn't really possible; I do not have much money and I am still struggling to even find a job. I am still open to people making fan-art and such; go wild. I am just sticking to myself for making most of the series.
And don't worry, I am not going to use A.I. That would be very unethical, as it uses data collected from the internet, including images from other artists (plus it wouldn't be able to do my style anyways) and literature works. It would not properly stick to the ideas I have made either, and it would probably limit itself when making serious and dark moments. Heck, it may even fail at comedy, since most A.I. appears to only allow light-hearted humor in their responses. I spent about 4 hours now typing all of this up; an A.I. could do equally as much within seconds yet have so many details wrong due to lack of information about my stuff on the internet.