Dutch artist M.C. Escher, who among other pieces of work completed “Reptiles”, inspired my piece called “Puzzled Dinosaurs”.

Puzzled Dinosaurs is a product consisting of a 30-piece dinosaur puzzle sold with dinosaur figurines for ages 3 years plus. Primary and secondary colours were used for the puzzle pieces and the dinosaur figurines.

The first step was to create a dinosaur of equal shape and size in order to be able to interlock the pieces of the puzzle. The images were created using the pen tool and tracing over a scanned image of the puzzle. The path created by the pen tool was used to create a vector mask, providing flexibility and edit capabilities to the shape of the dinosaur used for the puzzle pieces. Copies of dinosaurs were made to accommodate the 6 colours used and multiple pieces required for the puzzle. The transformation tool was used to scale and rotate the dinosaurs into position and a beveled edge added to reflect the cutout edge of a puzzle. Also, the transparency of the dinosaurs builds up as the dinosaurs float further down the river.

Images from the Internet were downloaded and saved as RGB files to use for the dinosaurs that represent figurines. The quick selection tool was used to outline the selection of the dinosaur. Pending on the image, the Inverse tool was used and then the image copied and pasted, making a new layer with the selection, minus the background, or dragged onto the other document. Once on the working document, a family of 4 dinosaurs were created from one shape, positioned and then manipulated using the transformation perspective tool. (Another dinosaur shape was created using the pen tool, however, as the project evolved, I decided to use more life like images for the figurines.)

The setting for the dinosaurs was a photo taken during a vacation in Costa Rica. The photo shows pieces of the puzzle separating as they flow along the river, while dinosaur figurines walk through the water looking for vegetation to eat – an environment common to these dinosaurs.

Areas with other shapes and text:

A shape of a puzzle was taken from the Internet and text added to show that this product includes a 30-piece puzzle. The “Cooper Black Regular” 30 size font was used to cut out the shape of 30 pcs (pieces).

Also, a circle shape with a line crossed through it was dragged onto the canvas from Photoshop shapes library to make a children’s safety warning for use of the product. The label was outlined in red.