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Ang's Creature Workshop #1; Activity- Raster or Traditional
Topic Started: Feb 18 2006, 03:56 PM (20,684 Views)
Anghenfil
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PELICAAAAAN
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In this workshop, I'll tell you how to go about designing and drawing beasties, monstrosities, and miscellaneous critters. I tend to put strong emphasis on real-life animal anatomy, so if you want tips on drawing more realistic animals, hang around because I'll cover those too. I am not a professional of any kind, so don't treat anything I say here as gospel. This is just my personal process for designing and there are better methods out there. In fact, if your findings clash with mine, I strongly encourage a heated argument over the matter immediately. :P And of course adding to the compendium of knowledge is smiled upon. Remember, helping your fellow Brackenites is how people get their Motm status!

Let me clarify: When I say designing your own creatures, I don't mean just remaking a dragon, sticking a set of wings on a horse, or making another wolf/human incarnate. Those are all fine and good, amazing things are done with stock ideas, but it's harder to be creative when you're working with a design archetype: Your audience will come to you with a set of expectations, and if those expectations aren't met, they're liable to get pissy. So it's often less headache (and more fun) to go and make something from scratch -- completely new, completely yours.


[size=7]Let's Start From the Top...[/size]

Where do you start the design? What sets off the chain reaction of thoughts? Personally, story always comes first. I have about twenty-thirty story ideas running around at all times and I rarely draw anything past the doodle stage that isn't a commission piece or a character with their own developed back story. If you have a hard time coming up with character designs, try thinking of a story first -- when you set up a place for characters to exist, they tend to spontaneously spring from the framework. Their role in the story will tell you the general form and function they desire. Do they need to be able to travel long distances in their quest for adventure? Long legs or wings might make sense on this character. Are they feared far and wide for their looks? Spikes and rabid foaming at the mouth would work.

Note that it is entirely possible to create characters in a vacuum -- It just tends to be harder. If you are god-honestly stuck, go pick an unusual animal as a base and work from there. Heck, you could even start from a sphere, anything will do.

Once I have an idea to work with, I start making thumbnails. A LOT of them.

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These are some first-phase drawings I made for Clair (aka "Spermy"). The thumbnails at this stage don't need to look good or even be complete. Usually, no one will see first-phase drawings but you, so make them as shitty as you please. They are strictly to hammer out shapes, forms, attitudes -- it will help you decide what works and what doesn't, and what you want your character to have in its makeup. I knew from the onset I wanted a fish-like creature that floated in the air, was a bit of a clown, feminine, and fairly cute. Parrot and angel fish came to mind, and I had thought of adding bird features, but I didn't have much of anything at the onset. I was just gasping at straws until something struck my fancy. The winner of the first round is the one starred in red. Why? Because it's the least typical of the bunch while maintaining good design. It's not quite a fish or a bird, and now it has a nifty sperm-like tail to give it some line of action.

Now we enter phase two:

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(Sorry about the scans; I like to work on large paper, so it's difficult to get it flat on the scanning bed).

Here I've experimented more with Clair's shape. Her head is more oval compared to the first sketch and other minor things are tweaked. I feel pretty good about the design at this point, so now it's time to go show it around to people and get feedback. Upon doing so, there appear to be two problems:

-The head and the chest are too similar. Too much shape symmetry is hard to read. I make the chest more of a bisected "heart" shape so it reads more like a bird, and this seems to do the trick.

-The little bobbly things above the head are a distracting shape and too far away from the head. Color might make the difference here though, so I move them closer and make them smaller pending another reason to change them.

Phases 3 and 4:

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Obviously the last one needs to be cleaned and colored, so this character is still a work in progress, but the drawing shape itself is unlike to change much more. While this particular character is nearly done, characters may go through an astronomical number of redesigns in their lifetime. Fifty to one hundred major redesigns are not unheard of in the professional world, so don't give up: Keep reworking it until you're satisfied. Alternatively, if you feel good about a design on the first pass, make sure you run it by some people before finalizing.


[size=7]~The Optional Delicious Bonus Section.~[/size]

The stuff here isn’t necessary to do the workshop assignment, but it will help you out if you’re having trouble or want a nudge in the right direction. If you want to cut straight to the chase, scroll down to the next set of orange letters.

[size=7]->[/size] Avoid using the human form. "But Ang, you do this all the time!" you say. And you would be correct. That doesn't mean I should do it though. It's sort of a lame design cop-out when you're making a monster to just jam a wolverine's head on a human body and call it a day. Don't do it. There's about 15 million living species of flora and fauna on this earth, so it's not like there's a lack of source material. I will say that using the human form in unusual ways or using little bit of it can be used to great effect, so don't swear off humans entirely -- just go easy on them.

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The first character has good design, but it could be a fat old pervert in a K-Mart costume. Don't be fooled! The second character has human parts, but they're arranged in an interesting way, given a mechanical flare with Aztec elements and Mardi Grad colors. You can almost hear the angels singing.


[size=7]->[/size] Practice good assimilation habits. What I mean by this is don't just transplant dog legs onto a turkey vulture and expect it to look awesome. Think about the balance, function, and role of the creature you're making. Think about all the positions it can get into as it goes about its business. Can it bend over, sit, and climb? Often anatomical problems will affect the design (but not always).

As for assimilation itself, my general rule of thumb for combining body parts from different animals is that the part I'm transplanting must be changed in at least one way. Change the color of that Toucan's bill to fire engine red. Use that lion's body, but make the fur long and white. Change the curvature of those puffer fish spines. The less you use directly from each animal, the harder it will be for the audience to start placing stigma on what you draw. They'll have less context for judging it and have a harder time pinning down what is it.

Also, make sure the parts blend together; if you're putting a bird's bill on a lizard’s head, you'll need to change the contours of the skull so they flow together. An easy way to blend body parts together is to extend the same color, texture, or covering (fur, feathers, scales) over the entire body, but it's often interesting to have variation.

One more thing: It's fun and sometimes useful to pull from themes and objects as well as living things when designing. Adam Phillip's Umbrellafly has the inspirational object in its name, and the object's use blends seamlessly into the living creature.

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Beautifully objectified.

Posted Image[size=10]+[/size]Posted Image[size=10]+[/size]Posted Image[size=10]+[/size]
Posted Image[size=10]+[/size]Posted Image[size=10] = [/size]Posted Image


[size=7]->[/size] Step out of your box: The art of analogous shapes. A key way to make unique designs is to take a structure from an animal and use it in a new way. Perhaps you could take a peacock's tail and use it was a mane instead. Or use goat horns as digging claws. There's limitless potential here, so go wild!

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The spider legs on the back of this animal help give it presence and are used for fighting/intimidation rather than locomotion.


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Since back and front legs are reasonably similar, I was able to put bird wings in place of the back legs. A feather covering and scaled feet helped assimilate the other parts. Other parts of the body were changed to make it more avian (spread toes, talons, deep chest, thin fox-like face, eagle eyes, etc).

[size=7]->[/size] Know your anatomy! Like most things in life, you need to have a base set of tools and know-how to make all the pieces work together as they should. Having a strong knowledge of animal anatomy will help you tremendously with making your imaginary critters. Break down your reference animals, study their muscles, bones, and locomotion. Do gesture drawings of them in motion to understand how they move and draw studies if you're having trouble combining their parts. Sometimes just drawing a few basic shapes will do -- just enough to get a sense of the forms you need. No matter what I'm doing, I always gather visual reference, even if I only need to glance at it once or twice. Having refs available is nice to have.

Another thing: If you have pets or ready access to live animals, take advantage of them! Feel the way the bones move under their skin and draw them as much as you can. Don't try to make them sit still; draw from memory if they start moving and do only simple gesture drawings. Make sure to block where their spine, pelvis, ribcage, and other bone/muscle masses, especially if you're having trouble.

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These are two typical sketchbook pages of mine. The subjects were gibbons, squirrels, and lemurs from a nature documentary I was watching. Drawing from videos is okay, but your sketches will be better if you can draw your subjects in person. That way you can move all the way around the figure at your leisure to understand the form.

If you want to understand animal anatomy, the best two resources I've found are regretfully out of print, but two VERY good substitutes are:
-W. Frank Calderon's "Animal Painting and Anatomy." (Incredibly detailed bone and muscle breakdown).
-Ken Hultgren's "The Art of Animal Drawing." (Great for motion and gestures).

Although we won’t be drawing anatomy like this in this workshop, here’s a detailed anatomy breakdown I did for one of my creatures. When you have to do lots of drawings of one design, it helps to know where the masses of muscle and bone are. This amount of detail is a little overkill, but they’re fun to do when you’re having trouble wrapping your brain around how stuff is supposed to hook up in your creature’s body. I had a big problem in the planning stages of this creature deciding where to anchor the flight muscles. It birds, they anchor on the chest, but it was far too much of a stretch to do the same on this animal without the design suffering. Drawing it out like this helped me decide that they were going to be anchored into the back along the thoratic spine. When I went on to successive pictures, the reference material helped me construct them.

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Covering, Muscles, and Skeleton.

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Masses in motion. This is an acceptable level of detail for the workshop.

[size=7]->[/size] Always draw in motion. The only exception to this is if you're drawing an anatomical study of some kind or you're really struggling with the form. Otherwise, you should always draw your characters doing something, whether it is running, lifting, pushing, flying, leaping, or simply thinking. The more you think about and draw motion, the more alive your drawings will seem and this understanding of motion will carry over into your animation. Don't give up just because it's hard. If you have trouble drawing things that aren't perfectly sideways and static, start doing gesture drawings of real animals (see above) and when you go to draw your own stuff, draw the entire figure roughly, and decide were the spine, skull, ribs, hips, arms, and legs are going to go before you start fleshing everything out. Planning is essential.

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[size=10]~The Assignment~[/size]

There is no prize and no time limit. Work at your own leisure; unfinished in-progress works are encouraged.

Your task is to design your own creature and then make least 4 drawings of it in motion. You don't need to color them, but you can if you like. The motion drawings DO NOT have to be detailed! Refer to my numerous fast and dirty drawings above. Construct your drawings with basic shapes and lines.

[size=7]You will be critiqued based on the following:[/size]

[size=7]1. [/size] The less it looks like a specific creature, the better. This includes creatures already designed by other people, such as dragons, anything belonging to Adam Phillips, and Pokemon. Anatomy and design are both important, but the key purpose of this exercise is to latch onto a creative core concept. It could be extremely well-designed and constructed, but if you put a human with cat ears in this thread I will smear peanut butter on your face and feed you to a bear. I’m not kidding.

[size=7]2. [/size]You must post live reference material, either pictures you looked at or gesture drawings you made form video footage or live subjects. If you have trouble understanding the form, look at muscle and skeletons for reference (Google "<your-animal-here> skeleton").

[size=7]3. [/size]Be daring with the motion sketches. Have your creature leap, stretch, bunch, fall, tumble, dive, and soar. Even subtle motion is better than none at all.

If you run into trouble or have questions, post them.

Good Luck! :wbitey:
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mr.nurbs
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:blink:

This is great. I am just the opposite Ang. I have lots of visual ideas and no story ideas. I am however in the process of creating some furry creatons so i'll post some when i get up tomorrow.

Awesome thread!
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crumb
Rufum Ru Sudily!
The daughter of god..
masterpieces, thankyou ever so much Ang. Like a book in one post, anatomys brill, everything. You have an amazing and giant imagination, you can interpret it into your art, i must concentrate on the "Know your anatomy!" section.
thanks again.

you deserve a peanut :lol:
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Thanatos
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Nice, Hey Ang. Can I use this for my adv art class? It would give me some projects I could do in class.
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Anghenfil
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Tordeck
Feb 18 2006, 02:06 AM
Nice, Hey Ang. Can I use this for my adv art class? It would give me some projects I could do in class.

Absolutely. Do what ever you want with it. :lol:
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Andros
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Check my location.
Wowza! Those dragon boobies are teh hawt!!1

But the "wowza" is not directed at them. No, rather at this incredible task that lies before me, the least of which being that I must gather the nerve to look at...*gulp*... the anatomy of my dear animal friends. I barely made it through pig dissection in Biology, so I don't know if I can stomach this activity or not. Yet I must persevere! I promise myself that I will triumph over my squeamish body and draw mehself a monster! Yarr!
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Divine_Walrus
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Got a question about the forum? PM me! :)
mr.nurbs
Feb 18 2006, 03:58 PM
:blink:

There's more to come ;) You should check the MotM forum more often Nurbsy! :lol:
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Comlock
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So frigg'n Beautiful and informative at the same time! Great post Ri

I did a little quick consept sketch.
Is it ok? Do I smell peanut butter here? =o

Posted Image
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Alistair
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Down is the new Up.
oooh my god my dream has come true im going to get right at it :o
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Anghenfil
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Nice Arthur! Congrats on being the first to post content in my awesome thread. :lol:

Some crits:

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Overall I think it's a very strong start. The action sketches are from lots of different angles, and I like the combination of reptile, mammal (hooves), and the 3-pronged tongue. I REALLY like the big chin/crop thing you've got going, sort of like a snapping turtle and a pelican. Can I see what you used for reference?

His back legs seem to go too far up into his body without the skin merging into the torso. Unless you're going to give him really wide hips like a chicken, have the skin merge sooner.

The shoulders are reading excessively human to me, mostly because of the big deltoids. They don't look right on this creature. Instead of making a deltoid mass when constructing this creature, use a shoulder blade mass. It will help you get away from this habit.

When I first looked at this creature, I thought his eyes were nostrils. Either move them, color them in when you sketch him, or find some way of calling attention to them. They're not working for me right now. Actually, the action pose with his mouth open works a little better than the main sketch. Maybe because his eyebrows are slanted the other way?

His overall silhouette isn't looking very natural right now and I'm not sure why. I highlighted the silhouette of one of your action poses because I think the teardrop shape works much better for him. It looks more streamlined and less inefectual.

The horn is a nice idea, but you don't repeat the shape anywhere else and it looks questionably out of place. Either get rid of it or repeat the shape -- maybe give him a row of smaller ones down the back.

Lastly, streamline his hands -- maybe by breaking up the size of the fingers. Look at lizard or other animal paws for reference.

Can't wait to see how you develop this, it's got a lot going for it. :wbitey:
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Comlock
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Thanx for the Crits Riannon=)

ref: for the arms I've used a reference pics in the book "anatomy for the artist"
by Sarah Simblet. So that's why the arm looked to "human"^^ (So cant post it here)

For the legs I used lots of pictures from here
http://www.photos.com/en/search/index?firs...arch&k_mode=any

Ive fixed the design a bit:

* more "teardrop" shape

* horn closer to head, wich makes it easier to place in other poses

* -acenting- the eyes by surounding it by dark skin pigments

*stipes. Stripes on legs, so it looks almost like a natural "sports pants" from nature^^

*lowering the leg

* fixed arms

*added another leg

Posted Image
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Anghenfil
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Wow, huge improvement. Nice fix with the eye.

The one design thing that still really bugs me is the horn. The numerous skin seperations you have between the body and the horn makes it almost look like a hat or a police flashy light thingy. Take that part of the design in another direction.

And sorry if my bone masses were confusing; I liked his beefy arms, but it works skinny too. Just have less symmetry between the upper and lower arm; thicken one up or change the length ratio.

I notice on your new drawing that you curved the foot. A hoof can't bend. :P This means you either need to rethink his foot slightly or accept that his foot can't bend that way. If you're using a horse for reference, remember that they have pretty much all the same joints between their ankle and hoof that we have between our wrist and finger tip. You can get a some flexibility on that alone.

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It's getting closer. I'm blown away by how much progress it made in just one pass. :bing:

Note: If anyone feels like offering input, go ahead. We're all here to help each other, so if you feel like you can contribute, please do. :fpbls:
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Comlock
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You're talking about the leg at the back? (furthest away)
How should I draw it then? =o

EDIT: I could just draw it like that horse leg on youre ref pic I guess

and yeah, you confused me on the arm thingy^^
Ill make it more beefy. Those are more fun to draw anyway..

(drawing now)
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Anghenfil
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I think you're thinking about it too hard. :D Horse's feet are quite flexible. Try to find some footage of horses running on a track or some hurdles so you can see how the back foot bends.

Some suggestions:

Posted Image

Good luck ol' buddy...
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Comlock
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These are my leafs:
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But you were talking about that foot right?
Posted Image

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I redrew it, but now that I look at you're sketch, Id rather use you're suggestion for the foot^^

* new horn
* new arm\claws

For the arms and claws I used the tiger and my own hand for references
(So the overal design wont be to close to lizard\dinosaur)

Posted Image


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Anghenfil
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Good use of the tiger reference, good mixing of themes.

You're moving back too close to human arms. Look at how smoothly the muscles transition into the main bulk and how far up the shoulder blades extend. Also, a lot of the length of the forearm in cats is hidden under a lot of muscle, so it gives the illusion of being shorter than it really is.

Posted ImagePosted Image

Edit: The front view drawing is better. See how the shoulders are receeding more naturally?
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Comlock
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These are my leafs:
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New arm. Maby I exagurrated to much:
Posted Image
And I'll fix the tangent between leg and arm. And also the back leg
I'll just take a brake from now=)

:bfoot:
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Anghenfil
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Most of the exaggeration you're seeing is at the shoulder blade. Soften those lines up. However, I totally agree that you've done an awesome job, both with your result and the rapidity and success that you kept adjusting the design. You certainly get my seal of approval. :bfoot: The new arms are very successful, barring the tangent.
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Alistair
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can you pleasehelp me ang i really dont know what to do perhaps if you gve me some sort of specification i could come up with something :lol:
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SneakyRobot
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wow ang this is a great thread. i didnt read all of your big long post however because its big & long :P i may get around to it someday though. & to alistair: all you need to do is start drawing something. the creatures in your cartoon are pretty unique. it shows that you can do this. all you need to do is try to think of the unconventional while your there making lines on your page. i dont know much about the anatomy of many creatures & i really dont use a lot of refrances like ang was talking about. refrences & anatomy knowledge are a good & helpfull thing but they arent absolutely nessasary to make something imaginative. after you make your creature im sure ang & others will have plenty of usefull tips to perfect it. i drew this a long time ago but i think it would fit in quite nicely with this thread, as insparation if youd like or if you feel like dishing constructive criticism :D
Posted Image
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clayt
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omg.... there are some major organs exposed to the wild and frightening attacks of the fearus monsters/stuff out there... ha ha lol... thats a very good drawing there Sneaky.

I dont know any anatomy at all and stuff like that... i might just draw something see what i can come up with.
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Anghenfil
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Alistair
Feb 18 2006, 11:48 AM
can you pleasehelp me ang i really dont know what to do perhaps if you gve me some sort of specification i could come up with something :lol:

Can you be more specific? I give pretty clear expectations in the assignment portion. In any case, I'm sure you'll come up with something.

SneakyRobot
 
refrences & anatomy knowledge are a good & helpfull thing but they arent absolutely nessasary to make something imaginative.

This is indeed true, but as a general rule nature or culture has come up with everything you can possibly think of, and has done it better. Where the creativity comes in handy is putting the pieces together in interesting ways. Using reference, especially when something isn't looking "right," will help bump the quality of your work a great deal.

As for your drawing, VERY imaginative. I like that it's using features from non-Chordata taxonomy. I see influence from jellyfish, moth/insects, and crustaceans. The bones around the organs are cool, but it will look pretty odd in any view but a front one. If you put three, four, or five sets of bones around the organs, then you have something that can stand up better to being rotated. This makes sense both as design and as an anatomical choice.

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Something like this maybe.

Or, you can just encase the whole thing with jelly like a jelly fish. :P
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The claws shouldn't be so average in width the whole way around. Either make them more sylistic or reference crab/lobster claws. The barbs on the inside are interesting but a little distracting, so I'd make them smaller.

The little "skirt" of feelers (moth or brine shimp inspired?) is good, because they seem to be functional but also echo the shape of the longer tentacles. The barbs on the ends are cool. Take a look at fishhooks, because there are a lot of effective shapes besides the standard ones.

Posted ImagePosted Image

Good start. Can you do any action poses on it?
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SneakyRobot
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SneakBot
ever since i drew it i thought it needed some more bones but i guess i was just kinda lazy when i did it. all the complexity of the organs behind the bones would be a little more difficult & i was thinking it would be easeyer to imagine how it works & to even see them if it was done as a 3d rendering. but i havent learned how to do that yet so ill try it on paper i guess :P

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The claws shouldn't be so average in width the whole way around
you mean the beak or the tentacle claws?
Quote:
 
Good start. Can you do any action poses on it?
well i guess i could try. i havent actually drawn this guy in a while
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Anghenfil
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PELICAAAAAN
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That thing on top.

Posted Image

:blink: It's a beak? They look like crab claws to me. It's the hinge at the base that gives me this impression. Either way the shape isn't working for me; it's as thick at the top as it is at the base. You can either wing the change manually or get some pics to help you out. I like this critter a lot as a whole; it's very out of the ordinary.
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sharkcellar
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"l'enfer, c'est les autres" -Sartre
I like that creature alot myself. It reminds me a lot of some Lovecraft nightmare creature.
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