alexries

Antler progress

Working on the inner surface of the 'antlers': near the base, I am giving them a cutting/gripping edge, which allows the creature to butcher its prey and either cut it into smaller pieces, or push it directly down its throat.

Next I want to work on the tentacles/eye stalks, and decide where the eyes are going to go, and what method they use to adhere to prey. 

Pattern Revision

Work continues! A fair few ups and downs regarding the design led to a rethink and re-pattern. I have brought back some of the reef environment, and decided to simplify the mouth a little as I was having difficulty resolving it with earlier concepts.

Color wise I am aiming to add iridescent patterns and other effects once the main colors are locked in.

The jaws are being revised al...

Sandflats

Working out the details of the sand-slope the creature is hunting on. The red photosynthetic life give me the chance to help establish some visual scale and perspective, so I will tweak them as I go to help give some sense of staging to the scene.

The prey will have to be recolored to suit this new environment, and the main creature is yet to receive its skin patterns.

Final Approach...

Now that I am happy with the shape and basic design, I stripped the color off the creature to allow me to render its skin properly; I will add the patterns back on later with other layers. 

For now, I am methodically laying out the final mouthpart designs.

New Direction

As happens VERY often over the course of my artworks, a slight change of direction is underway. I am moving the creature into the sand flats, and having it ambush creatures swimming overhead. I want to explore some color schemes reminiscent of reef fish and invertebrates, which it will use as display patterns during threat and mating encounters.

Mouth Design

Working on the functional aspects of the mouthparts and attack tentacles. When this is nailed down I need to find a place to re-integrate the eyes at the base of the tentacles, and determine how food is drawn into the mouth (the main jaws are mostly for social display). I will probably be using a structure similar to the radula of a mollusk. 

Update

Coloring tests continue, still very early stages. One a direction is established I can commit and add details, textures etc. For now though, the experiments are mostly around how much detail to add to the mouth apparatus.

Coloring Begins

The stage of experimental and sometimes disastrous initial coloring begins! I will move onto the main creature before doing much more on the prey item, but wanted to do a little fine detail work on the helpless critter first.

Will have to research some 2015-11-30 18:35:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Set Dressing

Added some basic environmental elements and color so that I can adjust the values and composition.

Most of this stage is about making the main creature fit well within its environment, before committing to details and final color.

Display Structures

Seeing as I am exploring the display/ritual combat structure idea with the ambush worms' huge, oversized jaws, I conducted some research into the diversity of such structures. While the antlers of deer and horns of rhinoceros are familiar to us, the invertebrate world also sports a vast array of strange and often spectacular structures to threaten, impress or attract other individuals. Hypertrophi...

Next Stage

Now that I am reasonably happy with the line art, I have begun the masking process. Dropping in the basic areas I need, adding some simple monochrome shading to key areas, and layering things out as efficiently as I can. 

The new mouth design puts the 'Mouth Detail' window somewhat out of date, but I will leave it unchanged until i am 100% happy with the way the new head design works.&n...

Living Fossils

I have decided to take a slightly different direction with this critter that allows me to both experiment a little with the form, and also demonstrate another evolutionary concept - the so called 'living fossil'.

The creature is now not a direct ancestor to the birrin, but rather a modern organism in the oceans of Chri-irah. It has passed through geological time rather conservatively, its ef...

Update

Working on the cleaned up line art before coloring, and coming to a decision about how the prey capture happens. At the moment, the 'eyestalks' shoot out and ensnare prey which is then drawn towards the mouthparts to be butchered. HOWEVER, with large, sharp jaws and the current noodley eyestalks it runs a big risk of injuring itself! With that in mind I either need to reduce the inner jaws or make...

Spiny Things

Conducting research as I design the jaw mechanism of the birrin ancestor; here are some of the intriguing and rather giger-esque images one comes across if you look at the tongue (radula) of a mollusk!

Posing the Creature

Work continues on getting a good pose before fine tuning the design for coloring.

At this stage I am attempting to get a flowing, balanced composition that also accurately portrays the kind of predation I wish to show. At the moment, I believe combining the gasping fishbeast from the second sketch with the longer tentacles in the first could work well!

Ambush Worm

Sketches of the early attack sequences of the Ambush Worm: At this stage in birrin evolution, the eye stalks, which were originally part of a filter feeding mechanism, are still involved directly in feeding as adhesive tentacles. I need to design a mechanism that protects the eyes during a strike.

Early Bird

An early (YEARS old) pencil rendering of a possible avian relative of the birrin. This was back when the birrin had three eye stalks, the third being a tall extra flexible one on the top of the head. Those two antennae sticking out the back were olfactory sensors, which in modern birrin concepts, as well as designs for their relatives, as part of the eye stalks now.

Bonus!

A little bonus content for my new patrons, birrin office work!

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my Patreon! Lets kick this thing off...

My first artwork is going to further explore the early evolution of the birrin, and show that even in deep time their ancestors were already showing signs of the cunning predators they would some day become.

The earliest stage I have so far explored is the basketworm, seen above, a passive creature occupying a similar nic...