David Cunliffe's Blog

A few years ago, when I first had the idea for this book, it was supposed to be a project that I could “knock out” really quick before I started another longer project. After about a year of fleshing out the concept and figuring out how I wanted to do it, I figured it was only a few more months of work to simply compile everything that I had figured out. Well, that’s not exactly how it worked out.

After figuring out what I wanted the book to be, it took close to another year of work to put everything together and finish the book. At twice the length of the other books I’ve done (it’s 58 pages), it felt like 3x the quantity of work. On top of that, it’s a bit of a unique concept, so I was never certain anyone would be interested in it. But, I figure it has dinosaurs and it has robots, so someone out there is bound to be interested :)

My then 5 year old (who is now 6), has been a huge dinosaur fan for a few years now. As our collection of dinosaur books started to grow, I felt like most dinosaur books had a few shortcomings for a young audience. Many of them were VERY wordy, like an encyclopedia- and more words means fewer pictures. Or, the more simple dinosaur books for little kids were VERY simple and had unrealistic line drawings of dinosaurs. Also, a lot of the books were inconsistent in their treatment of each dinosaur. For example Tyrannosaurus might have a full page profile, but other cool dinosaurs would be merely mentioned in passing, or given a tiny blurb in the corner of the page. I wanted to see equal treatment for the more obscure dinosaurs, not just the most popular common ones.

So I decided to profile 25 dinosaurs. The list includes the most commonly known dinosaurs, but also a few lesser known species. Each dinosaur is listed alphabetically and given a full spread. And each spread follows the same format so every dinosaur has equal visibility.

Ever since I could remember I’ve enjoyed drawing pretend schematics and blueprints of robots, ridiculous tanks, orbital space lasers, etc. When brainstorming the concept for the book, I thought it would be great to combine two awesome things - Robot blueprints and Dinosaurs. I’ve always found both visually interesting subjects, so why not combine the two?

Each dinosaur page has a realistic dinosaur illustration with real dinosaur facts. Each blueprint page has a… less than realistic blueprint of the dinosaur on the opposite page of the spread. Since the dinosaur page has real facts, the blueprint page has real fiction.

Finally, I thought I ought to give the book a theme while I was at it. The theme comes in the form of intro and outro pages. On these pages, a fictional scientist gives you (the reader) the dinosaur profiles for review, with a warning not to share them or build them. What could possible go wrong?

I had a lot of fun making this book and hope there’s some other kids (or kids at heart) out there that can enjoy it too.

Available now on Amazon.com

Check out the Kickstarter Here!

At its core, Ultra Top Secret Robot Dinosaur Blueprints is a kid's dinosaur picture book. It has non-fiction dinosaur facts, with a fictitious theme. It profiles 25 different dinosaurs including their basic facts and full-page illustrations. 

This book is perfect for anyone that loves dinosaurs, robots or just cool books. It's fun for kids to look at and learn the basics about 25 dinosaurs. And because the book is a "folder of top secret documents", it's also awesome for imaginative play where the book can be used as a prop. Although it was created with kids as the intended audience, my hope while creating it, was that adults could have fun looking through it too.

The book doesn't have a storyline, but it does have a theme. 

In the introduction, the reader receives a folder of dinosaur research, put together by Professor Inkenblaut of the Institute for Top Secret Dinosaur Research. The bulk of the book contains that top secret dinosaur research.

Dinosaur Profiles Included:

Allosaurus

Ankylosaurus

Archaeopteryx

Archelon*

Baryonyx

Carnotaurus

Dilophosaurus

Diplodocus

Elasmosaurus*

Iguanodon

Pachycephalosaurus

Parasaurolophus

Protoceratops

Pteranodon*

Pterodactylus*

Quetzalcoatlus*

Sarcosuchus*

Spinosaurus

Stegosaurus

Styracosaurus

Therizinosaurus

Triceratops

Tylosaurus*

Tyrannosaurus

Utahraptor

Love the scared lion drawing by Tiffany Cunliffe. From Good Night Little Turtle.

I'll level with you. The main purpose of this particular blog post is to have SOMETHING up, so I can finish testing out nerdy website stuff, links, RSS feeds, etc. Boring, right?

But. Since you're here, and I'm here. Let's talk about the future. Too soon you say? Ok, we can take it slow.

Here's the scoop:

I need this basic website up so I can re-brand my published books with a reference back to here.

At the same time, hopefully we'll start building some SEO points with The Google.

Then, I've got 4 (yep, four!) books written and (mostly) fleshed out, burning a hole in my pocket, ready for illustration.

After those are published, we can start with phase 2. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

-David