Final Piece: Edit 1

Here is my first edit of my final piece. I've highlighted the spine on the younger creature a bit more so it doesn't look like its bent at a really uncomfortable angle. I've tilted the image so it gives the adult even more power and she chases the panicking youngster. I've also lightened the background more, to make it look further away, as the first image it was all the same colour.
I do want to do some more editing and see what happens when I play about with the colours more.  

Final Piece and Reflection

Here is my final piece for my first creature. I intend to create final pieces for all of my creatures and display them at my showcase. I also want to produce a book with all of the skeleton, muscle structures, illustrative pieces etc so audiences can see the development of each creature.

Within this painting, there are multiple reasons why this situation could occur. One is that this very poorly and young creature who's almost an adolescent, has broken his entire horn off. This could of happened from fighting with others, or it got very sick when it was younger, delaying the growth of the horn. Either way, this little one has stumbled onto this adults territory full of lush grass. This powerful female does not want a sick, weak creature on her lands that could attract predators, endangering her own calf as well as eating her grass. Therefore she has chased him off her land and onto the dry plains.

Another reason is that this is her own calf, who is sick and again, delaying the horn growth. The mother has become pregnant again and wants the new calf to have the best start in life. Therefore, chasing the sick one off of her land to make room for the new baby. Many animals on Earth do this, as to not waste energy and time raising a sick baby that'll most likely die.

Overall, I enjoyed painting this piece, and because I intend to display this at my showcase I'll most likely be editing it for the rest of the semester. There are a few details that I can see already such as the spine on the younger creature hasn't been highlighted enough. The muscle underneath it has but that gives the impressive that it's the spine, so it looks like quite a painful pose. I'll be editing that soon as well as the rest of the piece.

Sketches of the Final Piece

For my final piece, I've taken some sketches from my illustrative pieces and render them out into a digital painting. The adult, I lowered the head so it looks more like its charging, I tried to change the legs but in this image the creature looks too heavy, its trotting like an elephant or rhino would. I do want this creature to be heavily charging but not that heavy, it still needs to have speed and a but of agility. The adolescent was a bit difficult too, its running away, panicked and throwing a few bucks. I want to show the panic by having it a little bit off balance. With this image its too off balance and it needs more work.

Here are the final sketches of the two creatures. The adult looks a lot more faster, agile and it still looks heavy. The adolescent I'm happy with too as its leaping in the air. My next step is figuring out the layout of this piece. As you can see I've incorporated the golden spiral to help me with the layout.

Finally, I also used the rule of thirds to fix any layout issues too. I'm really looking forward to painting this and also excited to start developing my next creature.

Turnaround Sheets

Here are the final turnaround sheets for my first creature. The first one is the female, the second male. On the first image of each turnaround sheet, I have the creature without the growth on the face, the rest of the images do. This is because I want to show what the creatures face looks like underneath and because there is already of view of the head in the direction with the protective growth I thought it would still be appropriate. This has been done for both male and female turnaround sheets.
Now that I have the final design, I will create a 'final piece' which will be a digital painting with two of these creatures interacting. This will show even more story behind the creatures, much like the illustrative pieces. The painting will be fully rendered with colour too and it will round off the development of this creature nicely for me to move onto developing creature number 2.

Front and Back views

Before completing a turnaround sheet, I've created some studies of the front and back views for my creature. During a group meeting with Simone and several other students, the main comment that I had was that there was a lot of side views of my creature (apart from my sketches). Therefore I have taken on their advice and created front and back views of the skeleton, muscle structure and the creature fully rendered out.

Above is a skeleton view, front and back. The same skeleton is to the right but with outlines of the muscle structure. I didn't completely draw the creature with all four legs, the rest of the body etc as it would of been difficult to read and taken the viewers attention away from where I wanted them to focus.

Here is the same muscle structure but rendered out a little bit. I also added in the head just to give the viewer a bit of context, but like I've said, I haven't added in the rest of the body because it would of made the image difficult to read. 

Normally this creature would only hold its head this high if it was on high alert, because of the weight it has to hold and the energy it uses up. But for this blog post on the front and back muscles I have this creature holding up its head so the viewer is able to see it. 

In this image, it is the creature rendered out its muscles and a thin layer of skin. This is to show my process of building the creature from the skeleton up. I intend to use this method of rendering on the rest of my creatures within this project.
Also, the tail has been cut off because I want the viewer to be able to see the muscles. With the tail being so large it would of taken up a bit of the image so its but cut off temporarily.

This is the fully rendered out creature, apart from the colour. I decided to show only the female as with the male, they have a thick mane around their neck so obviously it would of covered a lot of the muscle structure that I wanted to show. The males still have the mane but for this post I'm only showing a female.

Although I like this colour scheme, I don't think it would be appropriate for the environment that this creature lives in. I will possibly use this colour pallet in the future on a creature where its more appropriate.
The reasons why I don't think the colour will work is because of the pink and blue tones. The environment that they live in is very hot and dry, they spend most of their lives searching for food or defending their own grasslands. Because the weather is so hot a lot of the grass is a tan colour. Only grass near water sources like a river will have lush green grass.

I like this colour scheme the best, it has both speckles and stripes to confuse predators whether there are multiple of this creature, or on their own. The red/brown colour will have them when roaming through dry lands in search of food. When they have plenty of food, they gain their strength, meaning that they are able to defend themselves more easily than if they were stranded and weak searching for food.

Creature Designer/Concept Artist Key Skills

Below is information from jobs ranging from Creature Designer and Concept artist. These jobs are also for levels of intermediate-senior. When searching for these I couldn't find any appropriate graduate/junior roles. 

While looking through these, its apparent that an extensive knowledge of human and animal anatomy is needed, and knowledge with 3D is desired. I do want to brand myself as a 2D artist however, showing that I can learn new skills and I'm familiar with 3D I believe would help me when I'm job hunting and possibly when creating my creatures. I'm not too sure if I'll have the time to create 3D sculptures of my creatures but I am considering it; it'll all depend on the feedback from my interviews and whether I can produce my creatures fast enough. 

ZeniMax Online Studios, USA (Concept Artist) 

Responsibilities:

• Illustrate a wide range of highly creative character and creature concepts for in-game use
• Assemble reference materials to support the concept designs
• Assist Art Director in establishing and maintaining a visual style for character and creature designs
• Produce art ranging from rough thumbnails to clean line work to print quality images
• Collaborate with other departments to concept strong in-game character concept

Requirements:

• Highly creative, passionate, and driven concept artist
• Ability to rapidly illustrate concepts based on verbal and written directions
•  Ability to create clean orthographic drawings to be used a modeling guide for in-game asset creation when needed
• Strong foundational knowledge of anatomy and proportions with the ability to exaggerate as needed
• Excellent digital Illustration skills with an advanced understanding of Photoshop and or Painter
• Able to take direction from Art Director and collaborate with Character Lead and Animation Lead
• Ability to hit tight schedules as required
• Self-motivated, good communication skills, and team player
• 2 years of game industry or film experience

Desired Skills and Pluses:

• Environment concept capabilities as well as character and creature designs
• 2 years or more of game development experience with one or more shipped titles
• 3D modeling and/or animation skills
• Dedicated gamer
• Knowledge of id software games

Portfolio Requirements:

• Character and Creature designs demonstrating an ability to infuse personality and emotion into designs
• Demonstrate a variety of character types; Creatures, Demons, NPC’s, Space Marines etc.
• Clean isometric drawings to be used as modeling guides for creation of production assets
• Completed polished illustrations demonstrating an ability to render subject matter in an environment

Sony (senior concept artist)

Responsibilities:

• Work with the art director and game director to visually develop characters, creatures, and props.
• Create rough sketches, fully rendered illustrative pieces, material sheets, model turns, movement sheets, pose sheets, paint overs, color palettes and other visual guides as needed by the development team.
• Research pertinent subject matter to bring believability to the characters and creatures as they exist in the game world.
• Undertake research and initiate information gathering prior to the commencement of a new task to ensure game design needs, reference materials, artistic direction and technological considerations are effectively managed to meet defined goals.
• Fully capable of resolving a range of complex artistic development issues for both artists as well as other team members.
• Actively improve skill sets and abilities by keeping aware of industry trends and techniques, evaluating competitive products, learning new software packages and traditional art methods.
• Possess strong time management and prioritization skills. This entails collaborating with the Production group to coordinate task lists to ensure assignments are progressing as expected according to schedules, milestones and overall project goals.
• May serve as an artistic resource for overall product or as a studio resource. This includes, but is not limited to, conducting general research, developing cutting-edge techniques or testing new systems and tools.

Requirements:

• Strong traditional fine art skills, training and production experience (illustration, painting, composition, human anatomy / organic forms, color theory, perspective, 2D & 3D design.)
• Highly proficient in the use of Photoshop/Painter as well as traditional painting/rendering techniques. Understanding of the fundamentals of 3D packages a plus
• Familiarity with video game product development
• Previous or next-gen video game platform experience is desirable
• Good communication, organizational, time management and interpersonal skills

Preferred Skills:

• B.A. in Fine Arts or relevant curriculum - or - equivalent skillset
• Minimum 3 years industry experience or related experience
• 1 or more published titles

ArenaNet (Creature Artist)

Requirements: 

• 3+ years of experience working in game development pipelines
• Must be eligible for work in the U.S. 

Skills:

• Understanding of human and creature anatomy
• Excitement and positive attitude to work with and get along with all of the other members of the team
• Understanding of technical aspects of creature and gameplay design
• Superior eye for shape language, color theory and light/shadow
• High level knowledge working with Maya/Max, Zbrush and Photoshop
• Ability to take and give criticism in a constructive but direct manner
• Self-motivated and passionate attitude toward continued education and the ability to share that knowledge with other team members

Fur variations

Here are multiple fur texture variations on all the colour schemes from the previous post. I studied the patterns of horses and zebras to come to a conclusion of the 3 main types of pattern that would be appropriate for this creature. They are large spots, stripes and speckled.
I'm not a fan of how the large spots came out because they make the creature remind me of a cow, so that pattern is basically scraped. The speckles are nice and I really like the look of number 10. However, I think the stripes look the best on all the colour variations and the ones that I like the most are number 12, which as both speckled and stripes and number 7, which only has stripes.
Right now, I can pick between which one I like the most, I will continue to create the turn around sheet.