Steph's Creature Gallery: Semester 2 Evaluation

This Semester has seen me grow as a Creature Designer. I have learnt to consider facts and science to support my design process to ensure believability. I have always aspired to achieve new levels of believability both as a designer and an artist and i feel this Semester has played a vital role in helping me achieve that.

My traditional art skills using pen, pencil and paper has have improved further using light and dark pencil on brown paper enabling me to create rendering techniques, this i also carried through into my digital art, using new grey scale and texturing techniques which enabled me to achieve new levels of realism i hadn't discovered before. I believe the use of textures i made myself using Maya software dramatically changed the look of my final concepts as well as saving me time i would have spent individually painting each hair as i have been known to do in the past. As a result of the discovery of these techniques i am very happy and comfortable using them within my future artworks.

I have also learnt to identify flaws in other creature designs and how i would personally alter that design to achieve a greater realism with consideration to natural history. I realise how important it is to look to creatures in existence in the world today for inspirations as it is surprising what can be achieved in a creature design when combining and using aspects of nature.

I feel this Semester has taught me so much and i have improved greatly as a Creature Designer from this Semester alone, and my discoveries and achievements will continue to flourish in my future works which i believe is a very exciting concept!

So as this exciting Semester 2 draws to a close, below is a list of potential plans and ideas for the 3rd and final Semester starting in September 2012, but between now and then i will be updating this blog with any thoughts, inspirations and works i arrive at over the summer... 'break'.

To produce a Creature filled book, either in the style of a Field guide and discovery of a new found island, or in the style of a 'Art of' book.
To experiment with a new found technique i read about in Junes issue of ImagineFX, where artist James Gurney uses Maquettes (Wire frame and Sculpey models) to help understand rendering techniques. (see below images).
To come up with an effective method of displaying my Natural History knowledge in my show, possibly using either; a life sized model of a creature design using Wire Frame and Sculpey and/or a technique of showing off skeletal, musculature and skin with inspirations from both Terryl Whitlatch and ROA (see INSPIRATION section of this Blog).
Possible use of Maya to model one of my creatures (or ask a 'Maya whizz' to do this for me) and i will texture and attempt to animate... This is a huge challenge for myself but one i have always aspired to do for as long as i care to remember!

So... busy times ahead to say the least! Summer? What Summer? I'll be doing what i do best...

Designing Creatures! ;)