It is with sadness that I report the death of palaeoartist Brian Franczak. Thanks to Norman Felchle for passing on this news.
Caption: in memorium Brian Franczak. At left, the only image of Brian I can find online. In the middle: the 1992 New Scientist article which mentions Brian’s study of Amargasaurus (this was also my first viewing of a Franczak piece of art). At right: one of the many Jurassic Park picture cards which Brian illustrated.
If you followed the palaeoart scene in the early 1990s, you surely know who Brian was and paid attention to his many excellent paintings of dinosaurs, since they were everywhere at the time. These were, in fact, seen by millions due to their use in Jurassic Park merchandise, in particular the collectible cards which came with the Kenner range of figures. Brian was affiliated with the Dinosaur Society and did commissioned artwork for them, was the recipient of the society’s first grant – it enabled him to travel to Argentina to study and illustrate the remarkable sauropod Amargasaurus (Hecht 1992) – and was also part of The Dinosaur Studio team, a Massachusetts-based consortium of artists who designed toys and sculptures, and created and installed exhibits at major museums (including the AMNH in New York).
Caption: I adore Brian’s stegosaur reconstructions. All of those shown here are from Dodson et al. (1990). Clockwise from top left: Dacentrurus armatus, Huayangosaurus tabaii, Tuojiangosaurus multispinus, Wuerhosaurus homheni. Since these images were produced (all are dated 1990), it’s been argued that Wuerhosaurus didn’t have short plates as shown here (the one plate this view is based on is apparently broken). Image: (c) Brian Franczak.
Beyond this, the sad fact is that I have very little to say about Brian, since I know just about nothing about Brian’s life, nor specifically about his passing. I have yet to see an obituary dedicated to him, and indeed biographical data on Brian is seemingly absent from the internet. His former website (paleolife-art.com, extremely active and frequently updated during his heyday) is no longer online: fragments are preserved at wayback machine, but not those featuring biographical info. If you have more information, please do add it to the comments below since it would be great if this article became a repository of Franczak-themed biographical data.
Caption: a Franczak reconstruction of Pachycephalosaurus in a woodland clearing. I expect that many of his scenes were based on real localities he visited and probably photographed; they look and feel real. This is one of several ‘animal in its environment’ Franczak scenes included in Dodson et al. (1990). Image: (c) Brian Franczak.
I do know that he was suffering with ill health for a while, worked during recent years at a bookstore (I believe Wilson’s Book World in St Petersburg, Florida) and had effectively been out of the palaeoart scene since the late 90s. I’ve also heard that he was suffering from a degenerative condition. He was, however, responding to correspondents via social media as of 2013.
Caption: an Early Jurassic European scene by Brian. A megalosaurid watches a group of scelidosaurs, dimorphodontid pterosaurs fly past. Image: (c) Brian Franczak.
I really liked (and still do like) his stuff. His dinosaurs were mostly accurate (albeit often featherless when they shouldn’t have been), were portrayed with interesting and good-looking colour schemes and patterns, and were often posed in interesting habitats and settings. A selection of my favourites, borrowed in particular from the giant 1990 Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs (Dodson et al. 1990) – a treasure trove of early 1990s dinosaur imagery – are featured here. A substantial number of Franczak illustrations (black and white drawings of live dinosaurs) are also included in Don Lessem and Donald Glut’s 1993 The Dinosaur Society’s Dinosaur Encyclopedia (Lessem & Glut 1993). This book was hugely popular back in the early 90s and presumably sold very well. I understand that it was pushed out in a real hurry (presumably to make the most of the Jurassic Park craze), in which case Brian and the other contributing artists (Tracy Ford also produced some quantity of novel work for the book) would have been under pressure to work at record speed.
Caption: key books which feature Franczak works. The Dodson et al. Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs (on the left) is a large book, so large that I can’t scan or properly photograph the cover. Image: Darren Naish.
The triangular vertical stripes Brian depicted on the bodies of his dinosaurs were a distinctive feature. A peculiar tangent: the ‘Arachnid’ aliens of Verhoeven’s 1997 Starship Troopers have a very similar colour scheme, so much so that I wondered aloud if this was no coincidence. Brian confirmed that it seemingly was, totally, a coincidence. This colour scheme lives on in the Battat dinosaur toys, produced during the 1990s by the Boston Museum of Science. The Tyrannosaurus in particular is classic Franczak, though I’m a bit hazy on how his colour schemes actually ended up being used on these toys (which remain among the best commercially available dinosaur toys ever produced).
Caption: another Franczak illustration from Dodson et al. (1990), this time depicting the African iguanodontian Ouranosaurus. Image: (c) Brian Franczak.
A criticism of Brian’s work might be that his animals were often shown in standard profile view and were sometimes posed in the stereotypical ‘Greg Paul’ running or trotting pose, but I put this down to the fact that the majority of his works were created for encyclopedias and were intended to depict ‘standard view’ as often as possible.
Caption: another Franczak montage, this time featuring Late Cretaceous theropods. Clockwise from upper left: Aublysodon (as it was imagined in the early 1990s; we today think that ‘aublysodontines’ are juvenile tyrannosaurines), Carnotaurus sastrei and Abelisaurus comahuensis. I love these pieces. A criticism of the Carnotaurus is that its neck is way too slender. Again, this wasn’t known or appreciated in 1990. Image: (c) Brian Franczak.
I never met Brian in person but corresponded with him a lot. He was born on 19th January 1955, so was 65. Farewell, my friend.
For previous TetZoo articles on dinosaur-themed palaeoart, see…
Up Close and Personal With the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, December 2018
Heilmann, Thompson, Beebe, Tetrapteryx and the Proavian, January 2019
The Life Appearance of Sauropod Dinosaurs, January 2019
Recollections of Dinosaurs Past and Present, the 1980s Exhibition, February 2019
The Fate of Burian’s Styracosaurus, May 2019
Mark Witton’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook, June 2019
Beautiful, Big, Bold Dinosaur Books: of Molina-Pérez and Larramendi’s Theropods, Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2, and Parker et al.’s Saurian, February 2020
Refs - -
Dodson, P., Britt, B., Carpenter, K., Forster, C. A., Gillette, D. D., Norell, M. A., Olshevsky, G., Parrish, J. M. & Weishampel, D. B. 1990. Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Illinois.
Hecht, J. 1992. Dollars for dinosaurs. New Scientist 136 (1845), 50.
Lessem, D. & Glut, D. F. 1993. The Dinosaur Society Dinosaur Encyclopedia. Random House, New York.
