C.O.W. #259, red pelted mile strider. WIPs

[(lark]

For more info and details about the rules go here:

http://www.concepyart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=110879


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ROUND #259, red pelted mile strider

topic:

ROUND#259, red pelted mile strider

this week we'll be creating a creature with legs so immense that when it makes one stride (or step) that covers a miles worth of travel. you can make its body large, or you can make its body very small. but its legs must be at least half a mile long each. as a bonus, it must have a bright red pelt (or have bright red fur).

show us this odd creature with the extremely long stride!

Requirements this week...

- the creatures legs must be at least half a mile long each.

- it must have bright red coloring on its fur.

- the rest is up to you!



Deadline:

may 16th 9:00pm PST (GMT -8 )

FINALS GO HERE!... http://conceptart.org/forums/showthr...25#post3454325

[elephant´s stroke]

Ok, here is something close to the image that crossed my mind while reading the brief...so big of a dude that don't even fit in the frame

[Lady Medusa]

For metric measures
1 mile is 1.609344 kilometres

That's like around 15 minutes of walking for those of you who don't know measurements that well

Edit:
Very quick sketches

Colored thumbnails. I'm more drawn to 1 and 2, but still considering A and B.. More A than B.
I do want to have some sort of marking in the fur. I didn't intend 1 to be tiger-stipes. They're just stripes, in case anyone wondered.

[elephant´s stroke]

I really like those designs, maybe you can try to change the versions a little more to see what happens.

[Shmaba]

I read this and suddenly had a couple ideas. I might explore the possibilities more before going with one, so these 6 ideas are probably not the only one's I'll come up with.

[Voodoowolf]

Here's my perlim sketch idea. Going for the cheetah type long legged predator that is inspired by a long legged wolf-like creature that appears in my dreams sometimes. =)

[Voodoowolf]

so I realized that when I do concept stuff I do simple poses so I wanted to try some action perspective... Its a decent start I think
also coloration since I started painting the other one.

[IntoTheVoid]

Shmaba - your thumbs are amazing.

Okay, let's give this one a shot.
My attempt at some thumbnails:

[jon n]

here's mine so far. bounding furiously over open farmland.

[Lege1]

The Teterria, also known as a red pelted mile strider, is a giant scavenger beast that spends it's days searching for food on small islands. The Teterria are a species and are very rare. They are primarily harmless to humans and feed on mostly washed up sea carrion and seaweed. With each step this beast can easily cover a half mile of land, and when it fully extends it's accordion like legs, it can stretch to step over a mile.

[scorge]

Hi folks, what a great topic huh? Figured I owe you guys some crits since I never followed through when I said I was gonna do it last time: Warning, these might be blunt.

elephant's stroke: I dig your abstract style! Two things, the right arm and leg (to his right not ours) seems to be experiencing a serious tangent. #2 And I know this goes against your comment, but even though he is that big, his pose makes him seem as if he's affected by the cropping of the frame. It's a little awkward. Don't forget to give him some volumes in the midsection as well.

Lady Medusa: Very nice sketches, I appreciate the silhouette technique with the dashes of red. Now all you have to do is break away from the stereotypical designs if you can. For instance, the first critter (centipede looking guy), you've gotta figure that if one of his legs is half a mile long, he's got to be covering more like 14 miles instead of one, and the bird looking fellow, he looks like an average peacock. If I may suggest, especially since you're dealing with silhouettes, try making those silhouettes as unique as possible. Add some things that take these guys in a whole new direction while maintaining the base creature.

Voodoowolf: Good job on the dynamic change. Now the trick is to find some reference of some animal here on earth doing roughly the same kind of pose and really getting to know how this guys anatomy works without copying the reference exactly. Your initial profile sketch has a lot going for it, study it carefully to get a good handle on how this guy goes together. Then use perspective and light construction to build up his form.

IntoTheVoid: Sweet thumbs yourself. Not much to add atm.

jon n: Man, it's been a real pleasure seeing your unique stylized renditions of these topics which some of us can take way too seriously sometimes (myself included). You obviously know how to draw. My biggest crit would be that I can't help but notice that all of your creatures that I've seen in here so far have the same kind of expression and facial properties.

Lege: Hey Nick, you must be the only guy that's still around and been doing this almost as long as I have. Good for you dude. Did a quick paint over for you old buddy. Really need to recognize the areas of contrast and focus in on the focal points. Make use of local colors and depth of field to really put this guy into his element. I mainly focused on moving the leg, a lot of the face and pushing and pulling some areas. You have to try not to detail the heck out of everything and realize that some areas will be in shadow. Your treatment of the light is very specific to each individual element of the anatomy when in fact you should be focusing on the big picture. Anyway, you know I love you man. I tell you these things for your own good. Don't hate me.

So, after all my blathering, here's mine. I've really been practicing getting my brush to do some fleshy type things. Surprisingly quick turnaround, about 2 & 1/2 hours so far. Still working on the legs....Feel free to rip me a new one you guys if you are so inclined. I always appreciate the criticism.

[Askew]

Just a rough silhouette to get things started. I'm diggin' the idea of face tentacles/prehensile barbels and a slight sailback.

[Lege1]

Scorge: Thank you much man and know that I greatly appreciate the critique. I haven't done one of these in awhile so I am trying to get the rust off and get back to the routine. I experimented with things we have discussed and am finding a happy place in rendering. The contrast issue is something I have been having trouble with with quite some time in my art in general. I also neglected to put in some of the reflected light from the sky which I noticed you added in and makes all the difference in the world. Thank you so much for the paint over and know it helps much, I hope it helps others as well. Thanks again Scorge =)

[IntoTheVoid]

Thanks scorge! It was my first attempt at proper thumbs in quite a long while, so I'm glad they turned out okay

First wip, background is just a placeholder for now, as I plan on adding a fair bit of space around it. It's a water-glider type inspired by pond skaters. Crits are welcome.

[scorge]

My pleasure ITV and Lege. We're supposed to help each other out right?


Starting to get that redheaded step-child look..

[Lege1]

Scorge: Definitely and thanks again man. Really means a lot to get your guidance. You are without a doubt a COW master and I am super happy that you are still running in this forum. I look forward to others like Njoo and Jakkas coming back with beasties. It's a privilege and honor to have you on here with us =) Thanks again for the support and guidance.

[Si_Swe]

Scorge - Looks great. Looks like the new brush set-up is working out. Nice sense of fleshiness. I'd maybe push the scale a bit further, something to really give us a relative sense of scope.

[elephant´s stroke]

Thanks a lot for the usefull feedback scorge, much appreciated! i´m not sure if i´ll finish this one, but if i do i´ll tackle those things you mention, is true that the framing isn´t helping to thepresentation of the character. When you say tangents you mean that they are (right leg and arm) sharing the same kind of path or direction right?
I like your concept a lot but imo the torso part and head could be a lot more dinamic, right now they (torso+head) are describing almost a straight line.I´m trying to imagine that creature walking with the six extremities, and i think it would look a lot more contortionist like. There are some bulky shapes for the shoulders and the hair line, but they are not depicting the move in the spine, neck and head.

Note: after reading the book "Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators" some time ago, i'm extremely biased to see designs in terms of dinamic and energy, rather than surface representation or anatomy (wich are fundamental things to study and to try to master too imo, and are the complement for dinamics).
I can´t recommend that book enough to everyone, i read a lot of books and watched a lot of tutorials, but the concepts presented in that book were the biggest and greatest revelation to me (maybe because i was totally unaware of such concepts).
Ok, talked too much already!

Cheers

[jon n]

scorge- thanks for the feedback matey. my background is illustration but i want to broaden my doodling horizons.
the feedback i get on these forums is really helpfull in doing that. i do seem to be drawing lots of chunky faced beasts with cheesy grins at the mo!
in your pic i like the way you've dropped the hind toes of the creature beyond the horizon, it makes him look like a real biggun! lookin awesome!

elephant's stroke- i really like this! he has a childhood nightmare menacing quality about him for me. i feel like he would want to capture me gorg-fraggle style.

[Amine]

I was thinking of retractable legs, like the snail's eye.

[TinyBird]

Gotta try my hand with this one... going to go with this sort of crab/daddy long legs type of critter that's low to the ground, because it always bothers me what do these things eat if they're really high up all the time. So I think this could go both up and down.

[Nocebo]

Had some time and thought i would join in.
The Mountain Mimicry live in areas live in red mountain areas, mostly in the north and despite its size, blend in well with the mountains when it waits for its prey. It mostly hunt Bottle Boars which are extremely fast and don't go fare from its hole/cave.

(Im thinking about having the eyes lower down then normal as it never needs to look up but still need to make it look/feel right and dont think it does at the moment)

next steps will be value/some sort of mountain background and then colour.

[Garkudion]

Got into this a bit late

[electric goat]

Nice works y'all! Lot's of cool looking legs. I remember that guy Tyranx doing some badass giant beasts with lot's of atmosphere. Would be worth checking out for this challenge.

Scorge- Digging the lighting on yours.

Working on something myself. A bit rusty but happy to be back at it.

[scorge]

Electric Goat: Thanks man. I remember competing with Tyranx as well! I was pretty noobish back then and quickly consider him to be one of the guys to emulate in epicness. Along with Mike Corriero, Jakkas, Redehlert, and njoo I quickly learned how good I could potentially be and to this day still look to those guys for inspiration. .

[Garkudion]

Update! Looking a bit matte now, but adding contrast and highlights soon!

[IntoTheVoid]

My pleasure ITV and Lege. We're supposed to help each other out right?

Sure thing! Hopefully, after participating in a COW or two, I'll be able to return the favor
In the meantime, all I can say is I like your design, but to me the descriptor "strider" would only be given to animals with relatively slender legs, so maybe if the stilts took up a larger percentage of its legs it would look more like the strider type.

Update of mine:

[scorge]

Pushing that scale...

[Metallurgist]

Here is the beginnings of mine. Maybe I will actually finish this time x3
my design is somewhat similar to one of shmabas roughs, with the exception that it has a shorter neck and relies on an extremely long tongue to feed itself. I took inspiration from morrowinds silt striders.

[Metallurgist]

Didnt realize how late I was coming into this. I will try to work on it more later today. But this may end up being my final image. If its not accepted thats fine, I enjoyed it