Got my book from Blurb

I got my book from Blurb and I am so happy with it! All the images came out really well and the colours are good too. I was worried that the colours would change but they came out perfect. I'm now less worried about how the business cards will turn out and I'm getting pretty excited for the degree showcase; its all coming together nicely. Now I just have to order a book display stand and get my poster printed off. My friend Connor had a few left over business card holders so he said he'd save one for me for the showcase.
Overall, I am excited for the showcase and I'm really happy that all my hard work is paying off. I'm excited for what I'll be developing next for these creatures and new ones after uni.

Degree showcase poster

Here is my idea of my poster for the degree showcase. The poster is A2 and we're meant to have it as a portrait but Claire said we could have it as a landscape if we asked which I will be doing on Monday. The poster is basically the same as my business card but with my project title. I'm not too sure about having the title on the poster but I have plenty of time to think it over. I really think this image visually explains what my project is about without the use of text.
On monday I will be doing some test prints at the copy shop, I wont be able to blog about it because that is the day my coursework is due in and I plan on handing in my work on the Sunday.

Overall, I'm excited to see my work at the showcase and this year has gone by really fast. I've worked really hard and I can't wait to relax a bit more.

Business cards

Above are tests/developments of some business card ideas. I knew I wanted to use the fully rendered Iratus Horn with the muscles and skeleton showing within my business card, because I thought it showed off this project and my skills really well. I played about with different images such as the final pieces of creature 2 and 3, and some inkblots.
Below is my final business card. I used the final piece of creature 3 because it showed my illustrative skills and it was a good contrast to the other side of the card. I've ordered 250 cards from Vista Print and should get them on the 27/04/16 so I wont be able to blog about it but they will be at the degree showcase. If the colours turnout really bad, I still have the time to change the images and order some more, but hopefully it wont have to come to that.    

Also, the white boarder is not part of the business cards, they are for Vista Print to use as a safe guideline while printing/cutting.

Supervisor Meeting

I had a short meeting with Lynn today, we just went over some questions I had about my dissertation, such as if I needed to print out a hard copy - which I do, as well as the file for blackboard. I do want to print two copies of my dissertation so I can keep one and have my parents read it as they don't really understand what my course is.
We also talked about preparing for the final presentation and the practice ones we're going to have on the 28th in room 3508. I'm pretty nervous about the presentation but with practice, I'm sure I'll do fine.

Overall, short meeting but I got the answers to my questions, we have another meeting same time next week.

Book sent for print

I finally got my book ordered for the degree showcase; above is the cover of the book. It is meant to arrive on the 27th so plenty of time to get here. The book included my final production pipeline and the development work of all three of my creatures. I did leave out the charcoal sketches stage of the pipeline as it didn't actually help me too much when creating these creatures. However, I didn't take it out of the pipeline as I think its better to encourage myself to sketch out designs more, rather than rush through to illustrative pieces etc. The book itself is 68 pages and I've created it in InDesign so I have a PDF version of my book. I will submit the PDF along with my other work for the 25th deadline as the book itself wont arrive till the 27th.
Overall, I am really happy that I got this done in time and I'm pleased with how my creatures turned out like. As I always say, I'm looking forward to continue on researching and learning about animals and creature design and put everything I learn into practice after uni.

Perspective of all creatures

Above are the final creatures beside a human standing at 6,1 to show what size they all are. The Laetus Squid lives in the ocean, I just have it floating there to show the size more easily.
Through this project I have learned so much about creature design and animals themselves. I have enjoyed my research and practical work immensely and plan to continue my learning of creature design after university. I want to push my designs further and start thinking about what type of creatures in a second tree of life would look and behave like.  

Naming my creatures

I did some research into Latin and how animals are named because I've been putting off naming my creatures because I thought it would be very cringe. Mostly Latin is used in a way where the animal is named after its most noticeable feature. It's basically just describing the creature. Then the common name for the animal are sometimes taken from the Latin name too. I decided to do this for my creatures and looked up words that best describe each of them.

Monkey - Simia
Large horn - Est cornu magnum
Light - Lux
Glowing light - Refulgens
Bait - Cibus
Trap - Captionem
Colour changer - Mutante Colores
Heavy foot - Magna pedis
Anger - ira
Angry - Iratus
Colourful - Laetus

Below are the Latin names and common names for each creature.

Creature One
Common name: Iratus Horn
Latin name: Iratus Cornu Magnum (meaning angry large horn)

Creature Two
Common name: Glowing Simia
Latin name: Captionem Refulgens (meaning glowing light trap)

Creature Three 
Common name: Laetus Squid
Latin name: Mutante Colores (meaning colour changer)

Creature 2: Perspective

Above is the perspective sheet for creature 2 beside a human who is 6'1. The creature on the left is the male who is slightly bigger than the female on the right. The male also has a bigger tail.  

These creatures can overheat easily in the extreme heat of the sun in their environment; humans would also overheat easily. 

Overall, I really like this design and their bioluminescence feature; and they were the only creature that did not need to be redesigned through the production pipeline. 

Creature 1: Perspective

Above is the perspective sheet for creature 1 beside a human standing at 6'1. To the left of the human is the slightly smaller male and to the right, it the female. Overall, I am really happy with how this creature turned out like. 

Creature 3: Final Piece

Above is the final piece for creature 3. The creature has been hiding in the coral and the viewer has startled it. You can see that the creature is gradually turning into its afraid colour while the other half of its body is using the mottle pattern that it used to hide. You can also see there is a second creature that is hiding just below the first one. This one has not been startled and is using the mottle pattern to hide. Overall, I really enjoyed creating and developing this creature, and I think this painting shows off what this creature is by showing the viewer one creature changing colour/texture and the other perfectly hidden. 

Above are the sketches for the final piece and one WIP. I originally wanted the final piece to be bigger with a third creature hidden to the left of the image. However, as I was painting it, I thought it was a bit hard to read the layout and that the main creature which to be the focus of the painting, was a bit small. I then cropped the image and moved some of the coral around to make the composition better. I'm glad I did this as it had saved me a lot of time and the final image reads a lot better that the two images above.

Below are links to the reference images used in this final piece:

http://www.crystalandrox.com/pink-coral/

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/03/our-oceans-coral-is-dying-of-herpes/

Creature 1: Redesign part 2

After the suggestions during my meeting with Lynn, I did some redesigning. I redid the fur on the males neck and used a reference to make it look more matted and thicker because the last design didn't read very well. Lynn also suggested that I tried putting fur on the end of their tails like lions, however, lions use their tail to swat flies away and the fur helps. With these creatures, their tail is for counter balance and it has very limited movement that it could not be able to use it to swat flies. That is why I left that out because to be it wouldn't work and would not make sense.
The neck in the last designs was also a bit low, so I moved it higher. It was a subtle change but I think it worked well. Overall I really like how this redesign turned out. It is a lot better than the previous creature 1 designs and I would be proud to show it off at the degree show.

Final test prints

Above are some of the test prints of done on some of my artwork. Doing these tests will help me see how they print out for when i'm ordering my book. Obviously the printers and paper will be different for when creating my book but it is to see how different the images look compared to the screen on my laptop. I printed a few selected images because I have far too many drawings to print them all out several times. I choose to print some grayscale images like the renders of the muscles for creature 1, some coloured images and all the final pieces.
While studying how these images print out like, I look for details such as the contrast and brightness of the image. If something needs changing, I'll do it on photoshop and reprint it. One time I accidentally printed out a few images in black and white. This actually really helped me to see where in the images it is too dark or too light. In future, I will be doing this whenever I am painting, turning the image grey scale will help me with the contrast of the whole image.
Overall, I have a few images that need tweaking a bit before being sent to print for the book. In terms of business cards, they do not take very long to order and print so if something were to go drastically wrong with them, I can just buy more. But obviously Im trying my best for that not to happen, and im sure it after these test prints, it'll turn out fine.  

Meeting with my supervisor

For my meeting today with Lynn, I showed her my redesigns of creature 1. She liked them and gave me some advice for their structure such as their head might be too low and the mane on the male is not reading too well. She suggested I try to get these fixed and to look up some refs of messy fur such as a lions mane and tail.
I also showed her my WIP of my final piece for creature 3. She liked the setting but said I need to think about the colour temperature more. She suggested adding in more white to the painting, as a lot of it had high contrast, especially with the pink coral. Also I'm recently getting into the bad habit of blurring background objects as doing this losses all the detail in the paint. Lynn suggested that have two layers of the same object, blurring one and with the other layer on top, try to edit in some of the detail that I want. Fortunately I still had the original layer for one of the coral, so I'll be editing that too.  

Overall, most of my work is polishing it and getting it ready for the book. We will be meeting again, same time next week.

Horizon: Oceans of the Solar System

This documentary showed how scientists looked for life on other planets by searching for mass amounts of water such as lakes and oceans. That is because all life on Earth started out in the ocean, it is the origin of life. Scientists are look for a second tree of life, organisms that are clearly not related to any life form on Earth - something that we do not have a common ancestor with. 

The part of the documentary I want to focus on is the study of Saturn's moon, Titan. In 2005 a probe took pictures of Titan and discovered that its surface was unexpectedly earth like. It had huge lakes, not made of water but made of methane. The moon is -180 degree C, making it far too cold for any life form with an Earth like chemistry. 

Scientists at Cornell University are researching into whether a methane based life is possible. They took the chemical ingredients that exist on Titan and mixed them up inside a computer. The computer was able to build a membrane, one that functions in methane, not water. This is ground breaking as it is possible for there to be a second tree of like that functions completely differently than any animal on Earth. 

“We tend to think that life would look like us. You just have to look at the star trek movies, all the aliens kind of look like insects and things that we already know. But why not be something completely different? Something that we cannot imagine but something perfectly suited to the conditions that are on Titan.” Prof. Paulette Clancy  

My three creatures have been designed to function in the only way I know how, through water and oxygen etc. Because of this, they are most likely to live on an Earth like planet such as Kepler 186F or even Earth itself. If I was to continue on with this project, I would research into how creatures from a second tree of life would look like, behave, think and exist. Surviving on methane and hydrogen rather than water and oxygen etc. This would require a huge amount of research into these chemical compounds so I could understand them and how it could affect a creature.  

Overall, I have learnt a huge amount during this project and I excited to further my studies on animals and creature designs in my personal time after uni. 

Creature 2: Final edit on final piece

Above is the final edit on my final piece for creature 2. I've made it a lot brighter where the entrance of the cave is, highlight the creature. I've also made the fireflies brighter with the yellow glow reflecting off of the rocks in the background. For the creature, I made the steam of the lure to the back of the head a lot thick so it'll read better and it is clear that its apart of the creature.
Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out. I originally wasn't sure about it but after all the edits, its a lot better. I feel like this image does show the creature off really well on how it uses its lure and that the colour of its fur can suit this cave environment as well as blending in with the same out in the open.

Creature 3: Perspective

Above shows the perspective of creature 3 beside a human standing at 6'1. Although this creature is actually quite big beside a human, in this creatures world it is quite small for a sea creature. It is quite low on the food chain, but through evolution, it could become very powerful.
I hope to keep developing what this creature could evolve into after uni as it is something that really interests me. But, obviously for now, I do not have the time and it would be drifting away from my actual project aim if I did this.

Creature 1: fully rendered redesign

Here are the fully rendered redesigns of creature 1. Although the physical design of creature 1 has changed, its lifestyle hasn't. This redesign has made the creature more suited to its environment and lifestyle. The colour and pattern of their fur is to help them blend into the dry grass and earth. Even though the females who have lush green grasslands, will standout; they will have a fully grown horn making them very intimidating to most predators.
Overall, this redesign has greatly improved and looks more alien like rather than looking too similar to earth animals.

Creature 3: Disruptive

This is the disruptive pattern and the silhouettes of how the creature changes its body to further confuse what ever is looking at it. As this creature does not have anything to defend itself, changing into this pattern is its only hope when a predator has its eyes on it. The predator will become confused as to what this creature is, and will more than likely not risk its life to investigate what it is.

Creature 1: Muscle correction

While rendering out the muscles, I realised I forgot an important one in the front leg. Above I've outlined it out in red. It's a simple mistake and easy to fix; I just need to be more careful next time. I'm actually happy that I spotted this when I did, it shows that I've learned a lot about anatomy because I really think that before this year I wouldn't of been able to spot a mistake like this.

Creature 1: Anatomy

Above is the Skeleton and muscle structure of the redesigned creature 3. This creature is a lot more suited to its aggressive behaviour of charging at other animals by having a bigger and stronger body. The weight distribution is more balanced than the previous design and it can hold the weight of the horn more easily - therefore, a more believable creature design.
Next I will be fully rendering this creature, its fur colour and pattern will still be the same as its environment hasn't changed, just the body suit its world more.

Creature 3: Turnaround sheets

Above are the turnaround sheets for all the pattern templates. The order goes as Mottle, Uniform, Disruptive and the Afraid template.