Royal Scythe

 

 

This a is a creature Design for CG Hubs Creature Forge Challenge # 69 The Royal Scythe.  The creature design prompt calls for an animal with a long scythe shaped beak from which it gets its name. It's supposed to be a very elegant and beautiful creature with striking color that spends its time sun bathing and using its long beak to fetch prey from crevasses and cracks in it's environment.  

What I've posted here is the reference sheet I composed and the initial gray scale sketch I created for the creature. As you can probably see from my ref sheet the Scythe has the general posture and anatomy of various flightless birds.  I've taken inspiration from hadrosaurs to flesh out the shape of its head, and the sail from an odd therapod called Concavenator to figure out the structure of the fin on its back. 

The creature was one of the few and rare instances where the visual component of the of the design was very clear and well developed in my mind before I began to sketch, for which I'm thankful. There are still a lot of things to figure out, but I'm having a lot of fun with this guy.  Hope to post more soon.

 1.5 hrs
Adobe Photoshop CS5, Intuos 4 Tablet  
Artwork © Raul Ramos All Rights Reserved

Reconstructing Chirostenotes 03

More progress on this sculpture.  I blocked in the forms of the feathers and worked on developing the hands a bit more.  I was able to come up with a technique for sculpting the feather texture along the surface of the body, I'll have to wait until I'm able to up res the sculpt before I can really see the effects.  I'm really exited about finally purchasing my own copy of zbrush up until now I've had to rely on the computers at my school in order to work which is inconvenient at times. 

Reconstructing Chirostenotes 02

 

Progress update on my sculpt of Chirostenotes.  Constructed the armature out of zspheres using my ortho in the background as reference.  I then began massing in the muscles by using insert mesh brushes mostly spheres and tubes.  This is the first time I've tried out this process so it's a little slow going but so far I'm liking the approach.  

Artwork © Raul Ramos All Rights Reserved

Reconstructing Chirostenotes

My reference sheet and orthographic drawing of the oviraptorosaurian Chirostenotes pergracilis.  I've been having a lot of fun reconstructing this guy.  I based his proportions primarily off of a skeletal reconstruction done by Scott Hartman, an amazing paleo artist whom I reference a good deal when I'm doing this type of work. There are also many other skeletal drawings of not only Chirostenotes but its relatives in addition to photographs of actual skeletons.  There are a lot of bird references mainly Emu and Cassowary, I used these to help get a feel for the face and crest of the dinosaur as well as its feet.  I think the most challenging part of this whole drawing was finding reference for the dimensions of the front and top of the animal.  There are plenty of references for the side views but images of these dinosaurs from the top and front are few and far between I found.  This was pretty frustrating considering that knowing these dimensions is essential for the sculpture I'm preparing to make of him.  In the end I had to make a series of educated guesses using what I could find of other oviraptorosaurs, similar therapods and birds.  The ortho still isn't finished, hes featherless right now showing just the basic reptillian skin texture.  The feathers will be added as an overlay so I can experiment with different degrees of coverage.  

Artwork © Raul Ramos All Rights Reserved.  

Vampire Concepts

These are the initial concepts for a design challenge presented by CG Hub.  The challenge is to take a classic monster werewolf, mummy, vampire, or frankensteins monster and re-imagine it.  Im trying to stay as far away from the traditional interpretation of the vampire as I can taking cues from blood feeders in nature as well as many other aspects to inform my design.  The upper left concept is probably the most familiar.  The anatomy is overall humanoid however I have taken some characteristics from the gliding draco lizard and the celebes crested macaque to separated it from other more beast-like vampire interpretations.  I imagine that this creature would hunt human sized prey hiding in the upper canopy of forests then gliding down for the kill.  To the right of this is a concept based primarily on the anatomy of a flying lemur.  the facial structure was inspired by the nose leaf structures found in bats.  The lower left concept is based on blood sucking insects like mosquitos and ticks.  The final value study is based on the leech as well as the sea lamprey.  I was quick to dismiss this concept initially but I think it presents some interesting rendering opportunities.  I imagined that its body would be semi transparent allowing the viewer to see through the veiny outer tissues into its blood filled stomach much like the abdomen of a mosquito after it has fed.