PT: Congratulations Julius. How did the US postal service put out the call for the T. rex artwork and what did you do to get the job (besides showing them how extremely talented you are)?
Julius Csotonyi - JS: Thank you very much, Mike! In this case, I was contacted directly by the art director and designer of these stamps, Greg Breeding, who had seen my work elsewhere and who felt that the way that I handled the treatment of foreground versus background in my artwork would translate very well to the appearance of artwork on stamps. Greg and I worked very well together, and through our mutual brainstorming, we hammered out the ideas for the stamp set that has stomped out of the halls of the US Postal Service recently.
PT: What were the specifics they asked for in the artwork and was a paleontologist involved?
JC: This T. rex stamp project began during the time that I was working full steam on the murals for the Smithsonian's Deep Time exhibit, after The Nation's T. rex (or "Wankel rex") (formally MOR 555) had been delivered by FedEx to the National Museum of Natural History and was being mounted in the Deep Time Hall by Peter May's crew, Research Casting International. It was this high profile display, and the upcoming exhibit, that had presented such a great opportunity to the US Postal Service to feature this specimen on a stamp series. I didn't argue with the idea. So of course, we had some great scientific guidance for the project from Dr. Matthew Carrano, Curator of Dinosauria at the Smithsonian's NMNH.
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