2008 Creature / Animal Design

[davi]

Post any Creature / Animal design references here!

Best ways to link:
Use VB code Kind Girls
Example: Kind Girls (Http://www.Kindgirls.com)

[Moai]

This website (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/WebZ/initialize?sessionid=0&javascript=true&dbchoice=1&active=1&entityCurrentPage=Search1&dbname=Science&style=Science&next=NEXTCMD%7FSortedQuery?&context;&termsrch=%28ti%3D+%28Veterinary+Anatomical+lllustr ations%29%29&fmtclass=gallery&next=html/nfbrief.html&bad=error/badsearch.html&entitytoprecno=1&entitycurrecno=1&entitytempjds=TRUE&numrecs=12%7F) has almost every image from Ellenberger's Atlas of Animal Anatomy. There are several pages of very detailed anatomical plates.

Example:
423403

http://baby-rah.ru/de/?p=foto_pigmalion This is a gallery of hairless Sphynx cats. Great reference for hairless, wrinkly creatures.

423406

Steve Husky (http://bioweb.wku.edu/faculty/Huskey/) is a biology professor. More importantly, his faculty profile page has many quality images of reptile and fish skeletons. Just go right click > view image to see the images at a higher resolution.

423417

Animal Diversity Web (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html) is a great place to browse through. It has both photographs of animals and anatomical diagrams and such.

423418

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/zoology/skeletons.htm Is a nice gallery of high-res mammal skeletons.

Animals of the Fort Worth Zoo (http://whozoo.org/slideshow/NAanimalindex.html) is another decent gallery of animal photos.

Insect anatomy. (http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/Zoology/Insects/InsectAnatomy/mainpage.htm)

Digimorph! (http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/Zoology/Insects/InsectAnatomy/mainpage.htm) You have no idea how great this website is. It has very high-quality images of hundreds of different animal species (usually only skulls and skeletons, though). Even better, each species usually has several videos of the skull/body rotating and spinning, so you can study a specimen from any angle.

423434

Skeletal Drawing.com (http://www.skeletaldrawing.com/) is a fantastic gallery of dinosaur skeletons. There are even a few images of dinosaur musculature, which isn't something you see very often.

423436

Tetrapod Zoology (http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/) is a very good zoology blog that you may find interesting.

You'll find lots of neat animal skeleton images if you browse through http://www.skullsunlimited.com/

423441

http://www.nhc.ed.ac.uk/index.php?page=493 has some okay animal images and info to browse through.

http://geology.cwru.edu/~huwig/catalog/cenozoic.html is a somewhat interesting gallery of extinct mammals.

423442

http://www.dkimages.com/discover/Home/Animals/index.html is another decent gallery of animal images.

http://www.copyrightexpired.com/earlyimage/bones/previews_cenozoic.htm is a downright awesome gallery of extinct animal skeletons. The page I linked to is mostly extinct mammals, but you can easily navigate away to find some dinosaurs and such.

423445

And lasty, Wikipedia and Wikimedia commons are both great sources for animal references.

[arttorney]

Horses.
423978
423979

[Me,Myself & Me again]

I notice this thread is dwindling. Lets see if we can change that ^.^


Great big cat photos.
http://www.thebigcats.com/

Primates.
http://www.primates.com/welcome.htm

Overall animal (some plant and fungi).
http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/mammals.html
http://www.junglewalk.com/photos/Animal-pictures.htm

Reptiles.
http://www.reptilephotos.com/

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles.html

Birds.
http://www.birdsinflight.net/

[Psychotime]

Uh...Reptile Photos has a misleading name...

Great sites.

[Sway West]

www.skeletten.com (http://home.tiscali.nl/skeletten.com/) for poised avian skeletons.

[hillergren]

I stumbled upon this on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZGFrdbbBA

quite an exotic looking insect, Duliticola sp.

[Me,Myself & Me again]

Awsome male on male action ;)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=idLzuDRayno

[Me,Myself & Me again]

Enjoy :)

Some other great sites.
http://kappamedical.com/zoo.htm
http://www.animalpicturesarchive.com/list.php?qry=skeleton
http://www.california-wildlife.inkart.net/

African Wildlife:
http://www.africaguide.com/wildlife.htm
http://www.antbear.co.za/information/south-africa-wildlife-gallery.htm
http://www.awf.org/section/wildlife/gallery
http://www.nature-wildlife.com/mammals2.htm
http://www.sa-venues.com/wildlife/
http://www.wildlifeafrica.co.za/wildlife-pictures-lions.html
http://www.wildlife-pictures-online.com/


Ocean Wildlife:
http://www.allposters.com/-st/Tropical-Fish-Color-Photography-Posters_c57551_.htm
http://www.oceanimages.com/f-back.html
http://www.oceanlight.com/
http://www.oceanwideimages.com/
http://www.oceanwildlife.com/galleries.htm
http://www.seaphotos.com/
http://seapics.com/gallery/
http://www.wildoceanphotography.com/gallery.html


Rainforest Wildlife
http://www.deepgreenphotography.com/galleries.htm
http://www.grahambaileyphotography.com/amazon-wildlife.php
http://www.leslietaylor.net/gallery/animals/animal.htm

[Me,Myself & Me again]

This link is amazingly thoroul with each species :)
http://www.animalpicturesarchive.com/namelist.php

[iatriki]

bird skulls and skeletons
http://www.skullsite.com/index.htm

human and animal skulls and skeletons
http://www.boneclones.com/

[Meuniere]

I recently stumbled across this site (http://anatomyinmotion.com/)- it's a great site for horse anatomy. (the musculature is painted on a living horse, so you can see how the muscles shrink and expand when in motion)

[SirCalypso]

I'll put a few photos up of my Arabian I don't mind being used for reference. My point of putting this up is for a better understanding of expression, since the Arabian is a very expressive breed. These pictures are too skewed to be good for much else. Additionally, I'd love to know when they've been used, as she's my baby. ^.^

General info:
Gender: Mare
Height: 15.2hh
Age: 8
Season: Summer
Color: Chestnut sabino (those main white parts) with rabicano (hard to spot in most photos, so don't worry about it).
Condition: Pasture/non-working condition

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso28.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso30.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso31.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso32.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso33.jpg
These are indoor scenes when she had been hosed down, also great for seeing muscles. The expressions are due to duct tape on the bit (don't ask....), not from pain (more like displeasure and curiosity). As you can also see, the reins are kept loose at all times, she is making the expression of her own accord so you can translate them to horses without bridles.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso7.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso8.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso9.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso11.jpg
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d136/Tala_of_Black_Magick/Photography/Calypso4.jpg

[Lord Garvals]

Photo from Deviant. Done by Leocbrito.
Very inspiring if you want some winged bat-monsters.
-
http://gendar.ru/garvals/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/bat_by_leocbrito.jpg

[iatriki]

INSECTS-highrez photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7539598@N04/sets/72157600033217670/

[ESAUL]

Hi!
We´re started a new sets of animals - starting with dog. High quality photo references for you:

http://www.photo-reference-for-comic-artists.com/?id=3

[Gerulaitis]

BBC motion gallery (http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/Customer/SearchResults.aspx?searchText=animal&type=Simple) - that's about 18'000 video clips of animals in motion.
Decent quality. Free. Priceless for animators, but good enought for general learning. One can download watermarked clips for later viewing (don't try downloading all of them... i'm sure it's several terabytes of data). You should probably run narrower searches, though. (Example of male-on-male action involving lots and lots of bitchslaps (http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/Customer/SearchDetails.aspx?searchText=deer%20fighting%20AN D%20(deer%20AND%20(animal))&type=Simple&itemId=3ad24d5e-38eb-49f6-98e0-88900fb1e47b).) It's not limited to animals, either - you can search vehicles, people, cultures, martial arts, whatever...

[Max Challie]

Random scary stuff:

Tailless Whipscorpion (http://fireflyforest.net/firefly/2005/07/10/whats-lurking-in-my-garage-tonight/)
Japanese Spider Crabs (http://images.google.co.nz/images?as_st=y&hl=en&q=Japanese+spider+crab&btnG=Search+Images)

[guggemmaneuver]

615796

hehe ... i was taken aback by this sick looking icthyo find, courtesy this bbc article. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7935482.stm)

Dubbed the "Dracula" fish, the creature is about 17mm (0.7 inches) long and has been found in only one Burmese stream.

The researchers, from London's Natural History Museum (NHM), believe the fish lost its teeth over evolutionary time, but later evolved the bone fangs.

Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings B, they say the males use the fangs to jostle each other - but do not appear to draw blood.

"When you watch them in captivity you can see the males sparring," said NHM's Ralf Britz.

I thought 'my God, what is this, they can't be teeth'
Ralf Britz

"They display with their lower jaws open incredibly widely, then they nudge each other; but we don't see any wounds." ....

[Gerulaitis]

In my humble experience, grasping where the muscles and bones are in an animal from photo reference is sometimes not easy to do, particulary when the animal is covered with fur or it's smeary and blurry due to movement. Animal bronze sculptures (or photos of them) happen to be useful for learning animal anatomy, mainly because anatomy is well defined in the sculpture work, slightly exagerated, volumes simplified, easier to grasp and sometimes come in intersting dynamic poses. Take a look:
http://www.bronze-gallery.com/sculptors/artist.cfm?sculptorID=4

More available here (http://www.bronze-gallery.com/sculptors/sculptors.cfm?category=european) and here (http://www.bronze-gallery.com/sculptors/sculptors.cfm?category=american).

[Newman101]

Heres some animal skull (http://www.skullarama.com/)photos, they sell cast replicas of them too. I like them because they have the 'roaring' ones *laughs.

and Gaping Maws (http://www.gapingmaws.com/GapingMaws.htm) is a great place for roaring/yawning/screeching animals.

Hope some one finds these useful.

[JBurrough]

A brief photographer site with high quality safari animals: http://www.younggalleryphoto.com/photography/brandt/brandt.html

Great pics, detail and lighting are fantastic.

[benu]

Thousands of underwater photos with some bizarre and incredibly colored creatures:
http://www.starfish.ch/

Harlequin shrimp
http://www.starfish.ch/Fotos/crustaceans-Gliederfuesser/shrimps-Garnelen/Hymenocera-elegans1.jpg

Nudibranch
http://www.starfish.ch/Fotos/molluscs-Weichtiere/nudibranchs-Nacktschnecken/Aeolidina/Flabellinidae/Flabellina-poenicia1.jpg

Rhinopias scorpionfish
http://www.starfish.ch/photos/fishes-Fische/scorpionfishes-Skorpionfische/Rhinopias-frondosa26.jpg

[Cerasela]

chickens , i photographed them at my grandparents home ,
i hope they can be useful for some people ,in creating smth;)

[Liffey]

Although some great resources have been pointed out, there's nothing like having printed reference... I'm wanting to buy an animal encyclopedia with lots of clear, good sized photos. I'm not looking for an anatomy guide or even a book aimed towards artists. I would like an all-encompassing (or as close as you can get) book, that would be useful for studying a large variety of animals and their designs. Any ideas as to what would be my best bet? Right now I'm eyeing Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide to the World's Wildlife (http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Definitive-Visual-Worlds-Wildlife/dp/0756616344/ref=pd_sim_b_2). Earth and Universe also looks excellent for visual reference.

[Sofia Alexandra]

A gallery full of amazing macro photography: http://blepharopsis.deviantart.com/gallery/

I used this photo (http://blepharopsis.deviantart.com/art/The-Whisperer-in-Darkness-39405926) as a reference for this painting (http://sofiaalexandra.deviantart.com/art/The-Sentient-136991658), which is my first attempt at (some sort of) photorealism with acrylics. :)

[StreetBehemoth]

oh man, I have so much 3d.sk stuff (My school has an account), but I dont think I can post that :<

[kevlineuh]

Hey,
I post some pics of birds (I like them ;) ), that I took few months ago.

[Me,Myself & Me again]

Thanx everyone for contributing its very kool to see :)
And it helps allot!

[Angel Intheuk]

Came across this link on Facebook today, too good not to share...some gross stuff, some cute but all really amazing (I've seen some before but most were a shock - NB Shark warning!)


http://www.jamesgunn.com/2009/07/02/evolution-fucked-your-shit-up-the-worlds-50-freakiest-animals/

[Blondebeard]

Saw someone asking about evolution and creature design the other day somewhere on CA which got me thinking about my previous academic occupation, Biology =). So here's a big ol' list of wikipedia links of various topics dealing with critters.

A lot of the wiki articles will have multiple subtopics/links on them and usually some general examples associated with the classification for ease of use.

Anatomical Terms of Location (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location)
Anatomical Terms of Motion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_motion)
Animal Locomotion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_locomotion) (this has multiple subgroups including flight/swimming/terrestrial)

Stimulus Responses
Taxis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxis)
Tropism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropism)
Kinesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesis)
(all of these have multiple subgroups, interesting reads)

--Vertebrates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrata)

-Tetrapods - Vertebrate, 4 Legged/Apendages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapod)
--Tetrapod Subgroups--
Amphibians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibia)
Reptiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilia)
Mammals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalia)
Birds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aves)

-Fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish)
--Fish Subgroups--
Jawless Fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnatha)
Armoured Fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placodermi)
Cartilage Fish (Sharks/Rays) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrichthyes)
Ray-finned Fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinopterygii)

--Invertebrates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invertebrate)

Insects, Crustaceans, Arachnids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropod)
Squid, Snails, Bivalves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollusca)
Comb Jellies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctenophora)
Jellyfish, Coral, Sea Anemones, Hydras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnidaria)
Sponges (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porifera)
Starfish, Sea Urchin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinoderms)

[Moai]

I found a most excellent fish skeleton reference page. There's a huge variety, and the images are very high quality. There may even be skeletons of other kinds of animals on this site, but I haven't explored beyond the fish page yet.

Helter Skeletons

A sample :down:.

[DAMJAN]

hey guys, it would be nice if some of you can put up more photos of anatomy of different animals, thanks.

[Angel Intheuk]

NqVE9qfg7yI

No anatomy I'm afraid, but a great close up video of a coyote trying to attack a man. Good quality and you can see it from pretty much any angle.

[HAJiME]

Maco photos of jumping spiders and some flies. http://photoity.com/mindblowing-macro-photography-of-spiders-by-thomas-shahan/
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3379/4622896362_bf774d6b44_o.jpg

[Angel Intheuk]

/\He seems to have a slightly bemused expression :)

My fella took some pictures of his Creobroter Gemmatus Praying Mantis. This is in it's first 3 stages. They are fascinating creatures I love watching how they move they're so cute.

[Cerasela]

Found a 3d browser presentation with the skeleton of a dog and bone parts ,which you can rotate,move,zoom in any position http://www.real3danatomy.com