C.O.W. #211. Red-Hot, Speckled Rock-Muncher - WIPS Thread

[Si_Swe]

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For more info and details about the rules go here:

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


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ROUND#211: Red-Hot, Speckled Rock-Muncher

topic:

ROUND#211: Red-Hot, Speckled Rock-Muncher

Hey there creature-crafters. Today I decided to do a little bit of random generation to create our topic this week. By feeding in adjectives and variables into a random generation process we ended up with the above creature description. Simply put, your creature must be able to adhere to three above characteristics, the rest is up to you.


Deadline:

May 4th 9:00pm PST (GMT -8 )

finals go here: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3109551#post3109551

[millz]

Oooo sounds interesting... Im going to attempt it since it sounds cool but i may struggle, got an EOW piece coming along aswell and im moving to another city in a few days...

Did a quick sketch b4 i lose my idea...

[lancer_idenoure]

nice! reminds me of the old school topics. in a good way :) ill see what i can do for this

[APW]

Ahh brings me Back to when most Cows were like this! :)

[Rob Powell]

Great Topic! Even if they are just randomly put together, it gives you such room for creativity

I told myself I would start tomorrow....but I just couldn't resist, and I really like what I came up with so far...just sketching out the design as well as blockng in the composition. It only took me about half an hour, I guess when inspiration hits, you start to draw a little bit faster!

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[millz]

mines coming along quite fast, i guess my design was too simple...

[Si_Swe]

lancer and APW, that was the idea. You should expect more of these kinds of random-generation topics in the future. It's a fun process for me. If you feel like contributing, feel free to throw adjectives and creature-types into the suggestion thread, and I'll put them in the list for random generation.

millz - You have a week, try not to rush it. Right now, to be honest, speckled is the only one I can really see as emerging from the piece. The creature is red, but that doesn't necessarily imply that it's red-hot or any elements to suggest the "rock-muncher" theme. Your shading is also going to need work in terms of establishing form, those highlights are doing you no good whatsoever and I'd get your creature off a white background as fast as possible (try working with a neutral midtone so you can work both up and down in terms of value). Finally, push the design. Right now you have a design that looks simply like a variant of existing newts. There's a whole world of design possibilities, don't get stuck thinking about creatures in terms of real animal forms. Certainly use animals in your designs, just not as the design. Take a look at Mike Corriero's work in particular. He has a great way of taking existing animal elements and twisting them in unique ways to make an incredible myriad of creatures.

[millz]

ta, i was considering a redesign, it will be a struggle to make the deadline...

[brambor]

Great topic, such a shame I go out of town this weekend and I'm unable to participate. Damn! Still, subject is stimlating and I'll try to draw a Muncher for myself.

[RBeek]

cool designs so far guys :O
Wondering what everyone else will come up with :O

I found it quite hard to figure out a creature that meets the requirements..

I came up with this animal.. it uses his hard/boned skull and back to scrape of stone and break rocks after that he eats the small pieces of stone and due to his throat that is filled with acid stuff the stone heats up and melts so the creature stays warm and then smae proces happends his tail where he throws out sand instead of rock..

something like that XD

[matejkovacic]

Nice designs, waiting for more ...

My creature has a strong armour, which has to be strengthened by a lot
of stone calcium. Therefor the creature breaks the stone with enforced
claws and melts and digests it with a chemical process in a very hot stomach.

[Schoten]

First COW, I'm mostly a trad sculptor so I've decided to work on my weakness in the 2d arena.

Pulverizes rocks into a fine dust so it can digest the carbon and iron for it's armor

[Blankstate]

I know it's a bit too humanistic but being a child of the eighties can you really blame me if when I saw the words rock-muncher the first thing that popped into my head was the rock eater from The Never Ending Story?
He is speckled because he is a messy lava rock eater.

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[cake89]

agamemnon devourer of mountains XD
i gave him a hand with a really stout fingers and another shaped like a hammer. his tail is a cleaver scythe thing. 2 volcanos on his back.

also my first cow, plz be kind :D

[millz]

Think i will give up on this... too little time, too much to do.

[Si_Swe]

Blankslate - It was my first thought as well. Unfortunately, it's too much of a humanoid creature for me to let it into the poll (see rule #1a).

I should have some wips up in the near future.

[Rob Powell]

@Schoten:
I'd suggest keeping it's hind leg firmly attached to the body. Its way more appealing if we see the creature in it's entirety.

@cake89:
try adding some hind limbs. I aready got a bollockng from Si Swe about a creature with only two arms and no legs.

On another note cool designs so far guys

[warburton]

My WIP'S from this mornin -

[Hari Gopinathan]

Its been almost a year since i posted here.
This awesome topic inspired me to break the spell and take part.
Its only my second COW attempt.
So here is my first WIP.

Do tell me what u guys think.

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[Flame_Unquenchable]

After messing around all morning on something else that wasn't going anywhere I think I'm going to head in a new direction with this.

The arm anatomy may need an overhaul and the neck I'm not sure about.

Crits welcome.
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[Rob Powell]

@Hari Gopinathan: Looks neat so far, the forelimbs look a little stiff at the moment especially the creature's right arm. Another suggestion, make it's hand hang a bit when it's lifted so it looks like it's actually jointed to arm and not welded on. Referencing helps :)

@Flame_Unquenchable: Try to shorten that neck it seems a little long and could throw your creature of balance, as for the arms, they look way to stiff, it's a good idea to use reference when your unsure, look for pics with similar poses to what your going for, and finally the legs look a little useless under the creature's heavy frame, beef up those legs and make them a little more upright so the creature looks like it can walk and not shimmy it's butt along the ground :asspat:

My progress, started rendring the creatures, the colour seems a little off, but that can be fixed once I start establishing the form. Anyways I like how their looking at the moment, still experimenting here and there, but it's all in the process.
Any crits and suggestions are welcome! :)
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[Hari Gopinathan]

@Rob Powell Thanks for the comments. But I had already gone ahead with this one, so I am posting it anyway, :)
I might make some changes depending on time.
Planning to put in some details of the critter crushing rocks with his triple jaw.


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[Flame_Unquenchable]

Thx for the comments Rob. Did a rework on the anatomy and put the creature in a different pose.1222203

[RBeek]

Some really cool designs already here :O

@ rob powell I really like the composition you did for you COW .. drawing the creatures up in their natural enviroment. Great job there, looking forward to the end result!

@hari: the design is cool,, i just dont know why this creature would consume stone? he does look red hot and speckled though.... Maybe after the next update you will have me convinced! ;)

@flame: i like his big bulky appearance :) lookin forward to see you color it.


As for my update so far, im almost done.. prolly gonna render it a little more in some places but not to much.

[cake89]

here's a redesign on rob's suggestion, decided to make it a more grounded design but it's ended up looking too much like that one dinosaur for my taste

-primarily three bark and shrubbery, not fast, lives dry, rocky terrain with sparse vegetation(if there's a name for this lmk) main enemy being some kind of flying predator (vulture like?)
-large bulk, stores energy, can go long intervals without food or water
-will have a back that is colored and speckled in a way that can be used as camouflage
-tail like a mace at the end, used to loosen and crush rocks for ingestion
-tail has marking similar to a face, confuse predators
-swallows rocks, does not chew, uses for ammo and nutrients that increase tail mace strength
-rocks are heated in body to amazing temperatures, spews out of little holes on back when threatened (which is usually its flying nemesis)

feedback welcome

[Flame_Unquenchable]

Still lots to do, started playing with rendering a rocky type body and the red hot appearance in the gizzard area. :) Crits welcomed and appreciated!
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[Hari Gopinathan]

@Cake89- like this new sketch way more than the old one. But I think, the end of the tail looks too heavy for the creature to be able to lift it up that high. You might wanna rethink that.

@RBeek- Thanks for the cool design comment. :D
I liked yours a lot too,especially the striated throat and the cosmic purple light dance rendering.. Though the fore limbs look a lil thin and stiff. Maybe if you emphasized at the joints of the limb, it will look better.

And here is my explanation for why my creature would munch rocks. :)-

See, basically its a fire breathing creature. Hence crazy amounts of heat are created within it, during the acidic reactions that help it create the fire. So inorder to dissipate this heat, and act as cooling agent in these reactions, it needs to consume a particular element found in therocks on it's planet.
Hence though it's primary food is other creatures, it also needs to ingest a large quantity of these rocks inorder to regulate it's body temperature and to be able to use it's deadliest weapon.
This is also the reason why it has evolved three lower jaws. The combined crushing power enables the creature to break off and crumble rocks.

So if that doesnt explain it- i dunno what will---:D

And here is a detail of him breaking off rocks

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[Blankstate]

Some really good creature designs going on in here guys! :oneye:

Meanwhile elsewhere in the lava fields, unknown to the wayward travelers, another (much smaller) creature was getting it's grub on.

Actually, my idea is that it's a queen ant-like creature that needs to ingest molten lava to react with some type of acid or enzyme inside of it in order to produce the extremely hard amber-like outer shell of it's eggs. Which the worker critters then roll off into a tunnel.

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[DefiledVisions]

RBeek looking good there! I'm not feeling the "red-hot" though, you should add some heat to it!

here's a wip. There's a lot of hotness in here at the moment! ;)

[Banvivirie]

This small, molluscan-like creature live in deep, cramped underground caves. It feeds only on nutrient-poor rocks using its rasp-like tongue. Its intense body heat is a byproduct of the reactions of the enzymes used to digest such a meal. It holds several small rocks in its shell to absorb its body heat, which it regularly switches out to avoid early detection by predators. If startled, it may fling these coals out at the intruder while it sluggishly makes its escape.

[Nocebo]

First time im part of CoW or any weekly event on CA.

So on to a WIP

[Si_Swe]

After a few days of scanner trouble, I've managed to get some lower-res scans to you guys. I was working on a few designs, these were the two that I ended up liking the most.

[Flame_Unquenchable]

@ Nocebo - I like the wip. Does it ingest rocks through the 'trunk-like' part in the front? I can't really tell if it's sucking up the material or releasing it.

@ Si-Swe - I like those designs, the one thing I'd say is that the left foreleg of the 2nd creature is awkward. It makes it look like the creature is tripping and going to fall to the left. I hope the 2nd one has a firey bum, that seems fitting lol.

[sebs]

Here is my attempt after several so so sketches. I may not be able to get any more done before the deadline, so this may be final.

[Rob Powell]

@DefiledVisions: Very nice concept there, would like to see how the finished piece turns out:)

@Nocebo: Some nice rendering going on, but it's hard to tell what is going on exactly. Perhaps its still a little too early to tell, but it's hard to get a good feel of any creature anatomy.

@Si_Swe: Some neat designs there, actually reminds me a little of Rodrigo Vega (IRIRIV)'s work on deviantArt. I like certain aspects of both designs you have, so its hard to really choose which one I like better.

@Sebs: pretty cool, I'm not really feeling the bright turqouis spots on the red skin, though.

Here's a little more progress, I could probably use another week to really push the background to what I'm really going for, but it's not too far off. The creatures themselves are close to completion. I might change something about the bright orange tongue though, it's a little distracting.
Any crits and suggestions are welcome!
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...and to think I didn't erase the 'nom nom' yet...lol when you stare at it for so long it tends to slip your mind, I guess.

[Tigzz]

Hello all!
My account was activated just a few days ago so I can post my WIPs only now. So, here's the creature I doodled right after I had read the topic: some kind of wormy/lizardy-like rudimentary-legged thing.
Wish me good luck as this is my first try to participate any activity here on CA. I would also appreciate any kind of feedback.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/Tigrina/WIP0.jpg
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/Tigrina/WIP1-1.jpg
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/Tigrina/WIP3-1.jpg

[Si_Swe]

Muthafuckin' rocks all up in this bitch!
Here are some comments for the moment:
Tigzz - Welcome to COW. Pretty nice stuff right now. It's a little flat at the moment. I might make the tail twist so it goes into the background a ways, it will really give a better sense of depth to the piece. Try and get the lighting a little less even, right now it's fairly all-encompassing. Those rough edges also aren't working well on the base of the creature, it makes it feel like the creature isn't really interacting with a surface at all.
Rob Powell - I think this is a big improvement from your last piece. Right now the heated parts look very bright, but it's effect on the skin of the creatures and background is too minor. Your using a soft brush to render the light, but it would look a lot more luminous if you were using high opacity hard brushes. Try and cool down your shadows a ways, which will give the light a much warmer look and will balance your image.
sebs - Welcome to COW. My first two suggestions are to harder your edges, which are really fuzzy at the moment, and avoid the use of pure black, which looks very unnatural in most situations. Very few artists are capable of using pure black effectively in a digital painting. Lastly, you'll want to clean up your background a bunch, it's even fuzzier than the edges of the creature, which is giving a difficult (and flat) reading of the space.
DefiledVisions - Always glad to have you on board! I'm interested to see the way you tackle rocky textures, given your very painterly rendering style. Looking forward to an update.

Here's an update on mine, I'm planning on giving him a speckled belly (like fire-belly newts). I'm trying out a hatching rendering style for the first time...

[Banvivirie]

update

[Eiki]

won't have the time to finish this .....

long ago the creature was vegetarian, but its so hot, that it burns all crops around ... so it has to eat stones.

(failed with the head...)

[Schoten]

update of my rock louse final

[sebs]

@Rob Powell: thx, played with the spot layer and shifted it to a yellow almost green ... still not sold my self on either option. May change again before deadline.

@Si Swe: Thx ^-^ its a fun departure for me so far, I fixed the edges (took off poor effects layer and added some stuff). I also exported at the correct resolution :P. I will try to avoid the pure black in the future, I have done some work on it on this one for the time being.

I will keep working on it and try to remember to get it in before the dead line this time ^-^

[Si_Swe]

sebs - The edges look better, watch the perspective, especially on the rear leg.
Schoten - Try not to get too caught up in the textures, and focus more on developing a sense of form. Try hardening up your brushes and work on value modeling.
Eiki - Really hard to read the creature. It doesn't really read like a creature because of some of the flattened lighting and the irregular form of the udder-like portion.

Here's the last update on mine for today:

[Rob Powell]

@Si_Swe: Thnx for the tips...a lot of what your saying I am already taking into consideration, but I'll start using harder brushes for the lighting. also my last couple of pieces were more Ps images than actual painted art, this time I went straight into rendering with colour as opposed to rendering in the values then painting over with colour, I found myself painting a lot more than playing with the programs in Ps.
And btw, the rendering looks great on your creature, the hatching really adds to the texturing of the creature. I dunno how far along you are, but the belly looks a little iffy atm.

[Hari Gopinathan]

@Si_Swe: How binding is the only 1 image rule? Can I put in say two or three together- and make that my final?

[Si_Swe]

Hari, it really depends. The idea is to create 1 creature. If you put together 3 images of 3 different creatures, then no. If you're putting together a creature illustration with a couple of support images, then I'm okay with it. I have to treat it on a case-by-case basis, but it's a much better idea to focus on putting together 1 high quality image, rather than 3 alright ones, that portray more narrative. A piece of creature design should be able to convey almost everything about that creature in one image, so don't rely too much on having many images.

If you want a good example of multiple images used effectively, check out the Winner's Thread and go the round entitled Catapult Creature (I think it's Round #129).

Rob, the belly was at about the 50% done state at that point. It's been rendered a ways more at the moment.

[Flame_Unquenchable]

Taking cues and quotes from Hunchback over in the EOW :) and putting a ton of TLC into this one. Hopefully I can get the background done tomorrow before the deadline, because I need sleep.

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[Rob Powell]

@Si_Swe: ye, I thought it was still in pogress, but I guess that's the danger of critiquing a Wip. One thing I do notice, your creature here resembles your Titan War beast entry, mainly the nose.
Anyways thanx for the advice, did a little more work on it today and it looks much better, I'm almost done so I'll do the finishing touches tomorrow.

[Si_Swe]

Yeah, as artists we tend to have little stylistic ticks. One of mine tends to be those strange exaggerated noses. You can check out the rest of my creatures, though, I think those are the only two creatures I currently have up that have noses like that...

[DefiledVisions]

Rob Powel, thanks!

Thanks Si_Swe! right now it looks more like iron plating, which wasn't really the goal. I've thought up a purpose of the plating though, with the creature taking up precious mineral from the rocks and using it to grow an iron shell.
Right now the shapes are a mess, working on binding them together, then going for details like skin-folds and speckles.

See you in tha finals (finally a cow I both start and finish, lol :P)

take care!

[Hari Gopinathan]

DefiledVisions
Dude--- This is awesome man--- I love yours-- It rocks-- It's red hot and rocky!!! Rock on!!! :) \m/

[Hari Gopinathan]

@Si_Swe: In light of what you said- I prepared this collage of images for my final entry--- Could you please tell me if this violates any rules and whether it is admissible as my final entry...:)

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[Si_Swe]

Deadline in 1 hour. If you haven't submitted your final yet, do so now!