Zdenek Burian
Encyclopedia
Zdeněk Michael František Burian (February 11, 1905, Kopřivnice
, Moravia
- July 1, 1981 Prague
) was a Czech painter and book illustrator whose work played a central role in the development of palaeontological reconstructions during a remarkable career spanning five decades. Originally recognised only in his native Czechoslovakia
, Burian's fame later spread to an international audience, and a number of artists later attempted to emulate his style. He is regarded by many as the most influential palaeo-artist of the modern era.
, Tarzan
, Plutonia
) and some 600 book covers, but it is within the fields of palaeontology and palaeoanthropology that Burian's influence has been most notable. Since the late 1950s and early 1960s when Burian's work became known in the west through a series of large-format books released by the Artia publishing house, numerous scholarly and popular books on prehistoric life have featured his work, either as originals or as art based closely on them.
from 1938/39 (during World War II all universities in Czechoslovakia
were closed due to the German occupation) and subsequently (following Augusta's death in 1968) with Zdeněk Špinar
, painting accurate and magnificent reconstructions representing all forms of prehistoric life from many parts of the globe, from the earliest invertebrate
s to a vast array of fish
, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, as well as panoramic vistas of the landscapes in which they lived. Close to 500 prehistoric images were painted by him between the early 1930s and the late 1970s.
Whilst some of Burian's earliest palaeo works depicting North American species were inspired by the pioneering American palaeo-artist Charles R. Knight
(see for example, his first renditions of Stegosaurus
and Brontotherium
), partly because Burian lacked access to skeletal material for such reconstructions, Burian's work was less stylised and more convincing with respect to both the subjects and their landscapes, and soon became highly regarded amongst palaeontologists, especially in Europe. Previous palaeo-artists had often produced speculative works reflecting 19th century views of large dinosaurs as lethargic reptiles akin to giant lizards with sprawling limbs, but Burian convincingly painted them as active animals with parasagittal (mammal or bird-like) limb-movement and musculature.
Burian depicted the American sauropods Apatosaurus
[1940], Diplodocus
[1952 & 1965?], and Barosaurus
walking on land in elephantine fashion, and his 1941 reconstruction of the East African sauropod Brachiosaurus
(the only image showing the main subject in water) became one of the most reproduced dinosaur images in history. Although it is now considered unlikely that Brachiosaurus could have inhaled in deep water (unless it had a strengthened pleural cavity as do some whales), the reconstruction is remarkably realistic and was still being reproduced 60 years after it was painted.
As with many of his works, Burian's sauropod reconstructions reached iconic status, with the celebrated palaeontologist William Elgin Swinton (1900–1994) noting: "The ideas as well as the pictorially beautiful restorations of Zdenek Burian, done under the direction of the late Joseph Augusta (1962), create a lasting impression that appears to be decisive. The Czechoslovakian experts have placed us all in their debt and the life-restorations of Brontosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus provide debating points as well as aesthetic satisfaction" (The Dinosaurs, 1970: 189).
Another famous Burian painting (dated 1938) shows the dynamism of his work with a Tyrannosaurus Rex rushing to attack one of a pair of startled duck-billed Trachodon
as fleet-footed ornithomimids bound off in the distance. Following subsequent palaeontological evidence, the predator was later modified by adding skull protuberances and a stiffer tail. This painting is one of his few works that show dinosaurs in direct conflict.
Many of Burian's early paintings appeared in a series of large format books with text by Augusta, the first of which, Prehistoric Animals, was originally published in Czechoslovakia by Artia (1956) and later in many other countries including Italy, France, Germany, England and Japan. The late S.J. Gould, who was an enthusiast of the work of Charles R. Knight
, described it as one of the 20th Century's three most influential visual books on prehistory (many would suggest that it was the most influential), and it was followed by a series of other landmark titles: Prehistoric Birds & Reptiles, Prehistoric Sea Monsters, The Book of Mammoths, and Prehistoric Man, all of which became famous and collectable in their own right. The influence of Burian's work is clearly discernible in many later films depicting dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, right up to the Jurassic Park
series.
, Tylosaurus
, Brachiosaurus
, Diplodocus
, Stegosaurus
, Brontotherium
, Arsinoitherium
, Phororhacos, Archaeopteryx
amongst others.
Many of Burian's early works were accompanied by text from Augusta (often in an almost story-book fashion) and it is within this context that Burian produced his most memorable and famous works which were used as educational aids in schools across Czechoslovakia to show the succession of life on Earth. His style reflected a classic, almost romantic imagery that rarely showed animals fighting or preying on each other (some paintings did show carnivores with their prey, but generally either before the confrontation or after it had been dispatched). Two years after Augusta's death, Burian painted what is regarded as his last classic image, the famous 'heroic' Tarbosaurus
bataar of Mongolia (an image that was also widely reproduced and copied).
Following Augusta's death, conditions were increasingly placed on Burian's artistic licence and the scientific detail of what he painted, whilst he was also being asked to depict different species within the same scenes but as individual, non-interacting animals as in a montage. Given his background as a novel/action-scene illustrator, and the close collaboration with Augusta the 'story-teller', Burian viewed the subjects of his paintings as very real animals (as would a natural history artist), and the new restrictions did not sit well with him. An example of how his work was compromised is evident in another version of Brachiosaurus
that he painted in his later years under the direction of Vratislav Mazak; the animal, now shown on dry land, appears oddly out of proportion and fails to compare to the 1941 version. In his later years, Burian was in demand by publishers requesting bland, catalogue-like stand-alone prehistoric animal images as illustrations for reference books, a style that Burian neither favoured nor excelled at.
Burian's works, which vary in size from A4 to several square metres, were mostly executed in oils, both in colour and black and white, and exhibit keen attention to detail and unmistakable realism whilst maintaining a strong sense of atmosphere. Whilst his style was very traditional, it was combined with a dynamism that represented a break with the often staid palaeo-reconstructions of previous artists. A feature of many of the paintings, and one that is missing from the work of other palaeo artists, is the realistic effect of movement and action which was achieved not only by the dynamic positions of the subjects, but by a clever blurring of the edges of moving objects (such as the tips of waves or palm fronds in the wind) to produce a clever effect of photo-realism. It has often been noted that Burian's renditions appear to have been painted from life, so close is the perceived association between the subject and its environment. This is perhaps not surprising given that Burian was already well accomplished at painting natural history subjects before he began painting prehistoric scenes.
(especially his large oil canvas), at the National Museum (Prague)
and at the Anthropos Museum in Brno
(particularly his anthropological reconstructions).
Initially released by Czech publishers followed by western publishers Paul Hamlyn and Thames & Hudson with translated texts, Burian's work was later widely reproduced (often as teaching material) by European and American authors (including Edwin Colbert). Images based on his paintings have featured on postage stamps issued by many countries, and the pioneering director/animator Karel Zeman used Burian paintings to produce models and 2-D animated images for his 1955 landmark feature film Cesta do Pravěku (Journey to the Beginning of Time
).
Burian's work has probably inspired more imitators in the field of palae-reconstruction than any other artist, and his prehistoric paintings have frequently been copied, and not always with acknowledgement. A notable case is A New Look at the Dinosaurs, by Alan J. Charig
(1979), British Museum Natural History, which featured thinly-disguised ink copies of Burian paintings that were inversed as mirror images. Another example is the many Adèle Blanc-sec comic strips which depict dinosaurs closely resembling Burian's work (e.g. the Tarbosaurus
[tome 2] and the pterodactyl of 'Adèle and the Beast').
The 1992 video game Ecco the Dolphin
features in-game artwork inspired by Burian and recreated in pixels by Zsolt Balogh.
Koprivnice
Kopřivnice is a town in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has cca 23,500 inhabitants.- History :In 1850, both of the former villages, Drnholec nad Lubinou and Větřkovice, became a part of the political district of Nový Jičín within the judicial district Příbor...
, Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
- July 1, 1981 Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
) was a Czech painter and book illustrator whose work played a central role in the development of palaeontological reconstructions during a remarkable career spanning five decades. Originally recognised only in his native Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, Burian's fame later spread to an international audience, and a number of artists later attempted to emulate his style. He is regarded by many as the most influential palaeo-artist of the modern era.
Introduction
Burian was an extremely prolific artist whose works are estimated to number between 15,000 and 20,000 paintings and drawings (pen and pencil). He illustrated over 500 books (including natural history subjects and numerous classic novels such as Robinson CrusoeRobinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
, Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
, Plutonia
Plutonia
Plutonia may refer to:*Vladimir Obruchev's Plutonia * Psilocybe plutonia, a species of mushroom* The Plutonia Experiment, a WAD made for Final Doom...
) and some 600 book covers, but it is within the fields of palaeontology and palaeoanthropology that Burian's influence has been most notable. Since the late 1950s and early 1960s when Burian's work became known in the west through a series of large-format books released by the Artia publishing house, numerous scholarly and popular books on prehistoric life have featured his work, either as originals or as art based closely on them.
Early career and influence on palaeontology
Burian worked in initial cooperation with university palaeontologist Josef AugustaJosef Augusta
Josef Augusta was a Czechoslovak paleontologist, geologist, and science popularizer.During 1921 to 1925 Augusta studied at the university in Brno...
from 1938/39 (during World War II all universities in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
were closed due to the German occupation) and subsequently (following Augusta's death in 1968) with Zdeněk Špinar
Zdenek Špinar
Zdeněk Špinar was a Czech paleontologist and author. He was renowned in the field for popularising vertebrate paleontology. He specialised in the paleontology of amphibians, especially anurans. Many of his studies remain heavily cited. He is also known for a scientific collaboration with painter...
, painting accurate and magnificent reconstructions representing all forms of prehistoric life from many parts of the globe, from the earliest invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
s to a vast array of fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, as well as panoramic vistas of the landscapes in which they lived. Close to 500 prehistoric images were painted by him between the early 1930s and the late 1970s.
Whilst some of Burian's earliest palaeo works depicting North American species were inspired by the pioneering American palaeo-artist Charles R. Knight
Charles R. Knight
Charles Robert Knight was an American artist best known for his influential paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals...
(see for example, his first renditions of Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus is a genus of armored stegosaurid dinosaur. They lived during the Late Jurassic period , some 155 to 150 million years ago in what is now western North America. In 2006, a specimen of Stegosaurus was announced from Portugal, showing that they were present in Europe as well...
and Brontotherium
Brontotherium
Brontotherium is an extinct genus of prehistoric odd-toed ungulate mammal of the family Brontotheriidae, an extinct group of rhinoceros-like browsers related to horses. The genus was found in North America during the Late Eocene....
), partly because Burian lacked access to skeletal material for such reconstructions, Burian's work was less stylised and more convincing with respect to both the subjects and their landscapes, and soon became highly regarded amongst palaeontologists, especially in Europe. Previous palaeo-artists had often produced speculative works reflecting 19th century views of large dinosaurs as lethargic reptiles akin to giant lizards with sprawling limbs, but Burian convincingly painted them as active animals with parasagittal (mammal or bird-like) limb-movement and musculature.
Burian depicted the American sauropods Apatosaurus
Apatosaurus
Apatosaurus , also known by the popular but scientifically deprecated synonym Brontosaurus, is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived from about 154 to 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period . It was one of the largest land animals that ever existed, with an average length of and a...
[1940], Diplodocus
Diplodocus
Diplodocus , or )is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a Neo-Latin term derived from Greek "double" and "beam", in reference to its double-beamed chevron bones...
[1952 & 1965?], and Barosaurus
Barosaurus
Barosaurus ; Greek barys/βαρυς meaning 'heavy' and saurus/σαυρος meaning 'lizard', 'heavy lizard') was a giant, long-tailed, long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur closely related to the more familiar Diplodocus...
walking on land in elephantine fashion, and his 1941 reconstruction of the East African sauropod Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of North America. It was first described by Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax,...
(the only image showing the main subject in water) became one of the most reproduced dinosaur images in history. Although it is now considered unlikely that Brachiosaurus could have inhaled in deep water (unless it had a strengthened pleural cavity as do some whales), the reconstruction is remarkably realistic and was still being reproduced 60 years after it was painted.
As with many of his works, Burian's sauropod reconstructions reached iconic status, with the celebrated palaeontologist William Elgin Swinton (1900–1994) noting: "The ideas as well as the pictorially beautiful restorations of Zdenek Burian, done under the direction of the late Joseph Augusta (1962), create a lasting impression that appears to be decisive. The Czechoslovakian experts have placed us all in their debt and the life-restorations of Brontosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus provide debating points as well as aesthetic satisfaction" (The Dinosaurs, 1970: 189).
Another famous Burian painting (dated 1938) shows the dynamism of his work with a Tyrannosaurus Rex rushing to attack one of a pair of startled duck-billed Trachodon
Trachodon
Trachodon is a dubious genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur based on teeth from the Campanian-age Upper Cretaceous Judith River Formation of Montana, U.S.A...
as fleet-footed ornithomimids bound off in the distance. Following subsequent palaeontological evidence, the predator was later modified by adding skull protuberances and a stiffer tail. This painting is one of his few works that show dinosaurs in direct conflict.
Many of Burian's early paintings appeared in a series of large format books with text by Augusta, the first of which, Prehistoric Animals, was originally published in Czechoslovakia by Artia (1956) and later in many other countries including Italy, France, Germany, England and Japan. The late S.J. Gould, who was an enthusiast of the work of Charles R. Knight
Charles R. Knight
Charles Robert Knight was an American artist best known for his influential paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals...
, described it as one of the 20th Century's three most influential visual books on prehistory (many would suggest that it was the most influential), and it was followed by a series of other landmark titles: Prehistoric Birds & Reptiles, Prehistoric Sea Monsters, The Book of Mammoths, and Prehistoric Man, all of which became famous and collectable in their own right. The influence of Burian's work is clearly discernible in many later films depicting dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, right up to the Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park (franchise)
The Jurassic Park franchise is a series of books, films, comics, and videos centering on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs...
series.
Partial bibliography
- Life before Man Zdeněk V. Špinar, illustrated by Burian. Prague: Artia, 1972. Reprinted by Crescent Books, 1981. ISBN 0-517-34722-9
Artistic style
Although Burian's reconstructions of extinct life are very convincing, his often-reproduced dinosaur reconstructions were all the more remarkable in that he did not have access to skeletal material, but rather depended largely on drawings and photographs provided by his collaborators Augusta and Špinar (although Czechoslovakia had a notable history of palaeontological research, it lacked dinosaur fossils). In many cases, he undertook anatomical reconstructions of his subjects before depicting life restorations, and sometimes painted more than one version of an animal (particularly if the first version had been painted in b&w), examples being DimetrodonDimetrodon
Dimetrodon was a predatory synapsid genus that flourished during the Permian period, living between 280–265 million years ago ....
, Tylosaurus
Tylosaurus
Tylosaurus was a mosasaur, a large, predatory marine lizard closely related to modern monitor lizards and to snakes.-Paleobiology:...
, Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of North America. It was first described by Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax,...
, Diplodocus
Diplodocus
Diplodocus , or )is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a Neo-Latin term derived from Greek "double" and "beam", in reference to its double-beamed chevron bones...
, Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus is a genus of armored stegosaurid dinosaur. They lived during the Late Jurassic period , some 155 to 150 million years ago in what is now western North America. In 2006, a specimen of Stegosaurus was announced from Portugal, showing that they were present in Europe as well...
, Brontotherium
Brontotherium
Brontotherium is an extinct genus of prehistoric odd-toed ungulate mammal of the family Brontotheriidae, an extinct group of rhinoceros-like browsers related to horses. The genus was found in North America during the Late Eocene....
, Arsinoitherium
Arsinoitherium
Arsinoitherium is an extinct genus of paenungulate mammal related to elephants, sirenians, hyraxes and the extinct desmostylians, as well as to other extinct embrithopods...
, Phororhacos, Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx , sometimes referred to by its German name Urvogel , is a genus of theropod dinosaur that is closely related to birds. The name derives from the Ancient Greek meaning "ancient", and , meaning "feather" or "wing"...
amongst others.
Many of Burian's early works were accompanied by text from Augusta (often in an almost story-book fashion) and it is within this context that Burian produced his most memorable and famous works which were used as educational aids in schools across Czechoslovakia to show the succession of life on Earth. His style reflected a classic, almost romantic imagery that rarely showed animals fighting or preying on each other (some paintings did show carnivores with their prey, but generally either before the confrontation or after it had been dispatched). Two years after Augusta's death, Burian painted what is regarded as his last classic image, the famous 'heroic' Tarbosaurus
Tarbosaurus
Tarbosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that flourished in Asia about 70 million years ago, at the end of the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils have been recovered in Mongolia, with more fragmentary remains found further afield in parts of China. Although many species have been...
bataar of Mongolia (an image that was also widely reproduced and copied).
Following Augusta's death, conditions were increasingly placed on Burian's artistic licence and the scientific detail of what he painted, whilst he was also being asked to depict different species within the same scenes but as individual, non-interacting animals as in a montage. Given his background as a novel/action-scene illustrator, and the close collaboration with Augusta the 'story-teller', Burian viewed the subjects of his paintings as very real animals (as would a natural history artist), and the new restrictions did not sit well with him. An example of how his work was compromised is evident in another version of Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of North America. It was first described by Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax,...
that he painted in his later years under the direction of Vratislav Mazak; the animal, now shown on dry land, appears oddly out of proportion and fails to compare to the 1941 version. In his later years, Burian was in demand by publishers requesting bland, catalogue-like stand-alone prehistoric animal images as illustrations for reference books, a style that Burian neither favoured nor excelled at.
Burian's works, which vary in size from A4 to several square metres, were mostly executed in oils, both in colour and black and white, and exhibit keen attention to detail and unmistakable realism whilst maintaining a strong sense of atmosphere. Whilst his style was very traditional, it was combined with a dynamism that represented a break with the often staid palaeo-reconstructions of previous artists. A feature of many of the paintings, and one that is missing from the work of other palaeo artists, is the realistic effect of movement and action which was achieved not only by the dynamic positions of the subjects, but by a clever blurring of the edges of moving objects (such as the tips of waves or palm fronds in the wind) to produce a clever effect of photo-realism. It has often been noted that Burian's renditions appear to have been painted from life, so close is the perceived association between the subject and its environment. This is perhaps not surprising given that Burian was already well accomplished at painting natural history subjects before he began painting prehistoric scenes.
Legacy
Many Burian paintings have become celebrated images of palaeontology and palaeoanthropology, especially the frequently reproduced images of Mesozoic reptiles (pterosaurs, dinosaurs, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs) whilst his evocative depictions of proboscideans, Ice Age mammals, and a remarkable series of paintings of early hominids through to modern man are without equal. He also painted extant native peoples of the world, including those of Africa, South America and the South Pacific. Original Burian paintings are on exhibit at Dvůr Králové ZooDvur Králové Zoo
Dvůr Králové Zoo is a zoo located in Dvůr Králové nad Labem, Czech Republic.Dvůr Králové Zoo is a member of the Czech and Slovak Union of Zoological Gardens , founded in 1990, with 15 Czech and 4 Slovak member Zoos. From 1995 to 2010, Dvůr Králové Zoo was member of the European Association of Zoos...
(especially his large oil canvas), at the National Museum (Prague)
National Museum (Prague)
The National museum is a Czech museum institution intended to systematically establish, prepare and publicly exhibit natural scientific and historical collections. It was founded 1818 in Prague by Kašpar Maria Šternberg...
and at the Anthropos Museum in Brno
Brno
Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...
(particularly his anthropological reconstructions).
Initially released by Czech publishers followed by western publishers Paul Hamlyn and Thames & Hudson with translated texts, Burian's work was later widely reproduced (often as teaching material) by European and American authors (including Edwin Colbert). Images based on his paintings have featured on postage stamps issued by many countries, and the pioneering director/animator Karel Zeman used Burian paintings to produce models and 2-D animated images for his 1955 landmark feature film Cesta do Pravěku (Journey to the Beginning of Time
Journey to the Beginning of Time
Journey to the Beginning of Time is a 1955 Czechoslovak children's science fiction feature film directed by Karel Zeman. Produced using a combination of 2-D and 3-D models, it was the first of Zeman's productions to include actors in conjunction with stop-motion and special effects, and won awards...
).
Burian's work has probably inspired more imitators in the field of palae-reconstruction than any other artist, and his prehistoric paintings have frequently been copied, and not always with acknowledgement. A notable case is A New Look at the Dinosaurs, by Alan J. Charig
Alan J. Charig
Alan Jack Charig was an English palaeontologist and writer who popularised his subject on television and in books at the start of the wave of interest in dinosaurs in the 1970s....
(1979), British Museum Natural History, which featured thinly-disguised ink copies of Burian paintings that were inversed as mirror images. Another example is the many Adèle Blanc-sec comic strips which depict dinosaurs closely resembling Burian's work (e.g. the Tarbosaurus
Tarbosaurus
Tarbosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that flourished in Asia about 70 million years ago, at the end of the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils have been recovered in Mongolia, with more fragmentary remains found further afield in parts of China. Although many species have been...
[tome 2] and the pterodactyl of 'Adèle and the Beast').
The 1992 video game Ecco the Dolphin
Ecco the Dolphin
Ecco the Dolphin is a puzzle video game released in 1992 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. The central character, Ecco, is a bottlenose dolphin controlled by the player through a progression of side-scrolling aquatic levels...
features in-game artwork inspired by Burian and recreated in pixels by Zsolt Balogh.