I finally caught a CGHub competition before it was too late! This time its an exotic reptile sculpt and texture competition. No high fantasty creatures, just straight up reptiles. It was a hell of a time choosing a scaled beastie but I finally settled on the Andros Rock Iguana. They've got an imposing look with wonderful coloring that was different enough from the Green Iguana that I felt safe picking it. The competition is over mid August, so you'll be seeing updates soon! Inspiration board and first pass below...

On another note, work has got me really enjoying my prop modeling, so why not hit the next step and start working on a full blown enviroment vignette? I've just been waiting for the perfect piece of inspiration and it finally came when I stumbled across Tahra of CGHub. Dang this dude has style! We've got Miyazaki-esque backgrounds full of super vibrant color. He's got this amazing piece dubbed "Penguin Train" that feels so much like an island I lived on as a kid that I couldn't help myself. 

It's perfect for a first enviroment piece. It's small, contained and yet presents a bunch of challenges that I'd never really encounter as a character artist.

Speed Sculpts

I've been doing lots of lowpoly stuff. This tends to kill the creative spirit, so here are a few fast and messy creatures for your eyeballs. Each of these guys took between an hour or two.

Creature Design with Terryl Whitlatch

These are roughly in chronological order from my creature design class with Terryl Whitlatch. We had a week for each assignment. I'd say each one of the real animal sheets topped out around 15 hours and the creature designs anywhere between 15 to 20 hours to complete. The dinos were my favorite to both paint and design.