Creature Help

[AlmightyDtron]

Hey Everyone!

Just joined Crimson daggers. I thought i'd post something I started today. Feel free to rip it apart and give me a good critique.

[AlmightyDtron]

Worked on this creature some more.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey man, I'm not really a creature guy, but I'll see if I can come up with something useful for you.

I was gonna say the values need work, but you've improved them and brought the focus to the head and near foreleg in your latest iteration. You could probably still lighten that farthest leg a lot more to push it back and same but to a lessor degree for the closest rear leg. The background kinda hurts my eyes being so bright...I'd be inclined to tone it down with a gradient.

It's still obviously a wip and judging by the standard in this I'd say you're probably pretty good at rendering but you need to start building in more texture work and suggesting and defining the "materials" for the various parts. For example, higher speculars and maybe some more textural details for the creature's hide, resolving what that ridge on his back is meant to be (can't tell if they are boney, spiney, matted fur etc). You can also think about pattern. Many animals use patterning of their skin/fur for camouflage or mate attraction or just cuz it looks so damn cool (IMO haha) so maybe build some of that in to create more interest.
I'd work on that cast shadow to ground him(her?) a bit more.

In terms of design I find the silhouette a little symmetrical and uninteresting. Perhaps adding a tail or playing with the idea of the spiney elements but taken a bit further might help? I find the pose a bit plain but it's not bad; though I do think you've lost some of the dynamism from your original post.

I find the anatomy a little strange. The limbs look more like modified human anatomy than adapted animal anatomy. It could be what you're going for but I'm going to guess that's not what you're going for. I'd say it's better to start with animal anatomy and then diverge/mix and match from there. Makes things a bit more feasible looking I guess. Something in this strikes me as amphibious in nature for some reason so perhaps have a look at frog anatomy and other things like that to get some ideas for the limbs and attaching them to the body?

That's about it. Hmmm actually I did have a fair bit to say. Hope it helped anyway.

[AlmightyDtron]

Sweet. That all helps. I'm defiantly going to keep all that in mind. I think i'll do some studies of some amphibious animals. Thanks a ton!!!

[Amit Dutta]

Great...glad it was useful! Are those life drawings on toned paper on your blog done with charcoal btw? Very nice!

[AlmightyDtron]

Yup, I used vine charcoal and white chalk. I love working on toned paper. It's perfect for organizing values. You just mass in the shadows with the charcoal, mass in the lights with the chalk, leave the the paper as the middle tone, work the edges of those masses, and you are done. Ha, it's that easy. You don't want to mix the charcoal and chalk, because it just adds a weird color to it, and you pick up some mad eraser game from not mixing the two.

[Amit Dutta]

Sweet, I thought so. I've only dabbled messily with vine charcoal at life drawing but not on toned paper which I would really like to try because I'm lazy and I like simple. I find i spend a lot of time fumbling and value fiddling in the mid ranges if I have to build them myself. Cool man, thanks for the tip.

[AlmightyDtron]

I tried to incorporate Monkeybread's suggestions. I'm not sure if I did a good job :/ I defiantly need practice painting different textures...

[Amit Dutta]

I did a paintover to maybe give you an idea of how you could take it further.
I did change the rearmost leg to not be so close to the foreleg. It was a tangent and broke the silhouette a bit. I also fixed the perspective of the rear paw closest to us. It didn't really match the rest of the animal. I then adjusted the cast shadow and ground plane to match.

After that it was basically just adding texture, patterning and I really tried to accentuate the different materials and show what was hair/fur, skin, bone etc. The way I paint organic texture on this kinda thing is pretty simple. I pick the base value, then slightly lighten it or slightly darken it depending on if I want to paint raised or lowered forms. Then I essentially just scribble shapes to suggest lumps, bumps etc. Because the value shift is very slight it is pretty much as if you are raising or lowering the base form ever so slightly and you can get a lot of implied detail pretty quick just by semi-random scribbling of shapes. If I want a different kind of pattern I just change the shapes I scribble. I would go in after and add specific highlights to show off the actual material. It's a really fun process compared to other types of rendering. :)

I also made the eyes a bit clearer by setting them against a lighter background. Everywhere I wanted to accentuate the form or the depth of something I made sure I had either a dark against light, or a light against dark. Oh I also made the bottom of the creature lighter, as most animals are lighter at the bottom and darker above. Thas' about it. Hope it helps.

[AlmightyDtron]

Damn, that's bad ass. Ha, your painting is so much cooler.

[Amit Dutta]

Damn, that's bad ass. Ha, your painting is so much cooler.

Thanks man...I was enjoying it so much I went a bit further than I would have normally. I was working off your base so I got to do pretty much all the fun bits :)

[AlmightyDtron]

Hello,
I decided to make some changes to this creature. I still have some drawing issues to resolve. What do you guys think? Is it an improvement from my previous ones? I think I might make an attempt to color it. Anyone have a method of coloring in photoshop without painting directly into the black and white layer? I'm still trying to familiarize myself with photoshop.