Prelims to Fall Semester

Ok... well.. I've been so busy lately I wasn't able to post prelims here like I wanted to, so I thought I would at least show some preliminary stuff now before I post some final products. Also to bring an end to the year too :). Here is what I've been up to for the past 3 or 4 months :). Enjoy. I'll post the final products of these later on.

More zoo studies, final products, zbrush modeling stuff, life drawing pieces, and digital pieces to come!

Shifting Moon

Well, I'm finally done! My piece for the Werewolf Calendar Contest is finally done! I do have to admit that this is probably one of my best pieces background and lighting wise. I had a lot of fun with this.

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It is commonly believed that the full moon forces werewolves shift from their human forms. This, however, isn’t completely true. Werewolves do shift during the full moon most of the time, but only at will and because it’s more convenient for them. Under the cover of night and the full moon lighting up the sky to see by, werewolves have the chance to shift without being seen by other humans. The full moon also provides enough light for them to hunt, have family gatherings, or do rituals. This time of the month is especially convenient for the werewolves who live mostly as humans and are around some kind of civilization. It provides them with a time where they can shift at least once a month and be safe from human eyes in the darkness of night.
Some werewolves live a semi-normal human life, some a hybrid life, and others a life in the wild as wolves. No matter what though, shifting is part of a werewolf’s life. It can be from becoming a wolf during the full moon for a family gathering once a month to changing back to human once in awhile to stay safe when other people are around. Either way, every werewolf shifts and every time they do it’s always an incredibly painful experience.
Shifting requires a ton of energy and pain tolerance. To shift is to change the anatomy of one’s self at will. All at once, one’s bone structure has to reform and muscles must be grown and morphed. Pain tolerance is built up over time from early teen years to deal with this. New werewolves who are bitten always have a hard time shifting and are not always fully able to stand it. After shifting a werewolf’s energy is at its lowest and it is very vulnerable to others at this time. If one doesn’t shift over a long period of time (usually 4 to 5 months or more), when they eventually do it becomes almost too painful to do it ever again. Pain tolerance from shifting a lot or even once a month for the full moon is something that must be done to avoid this and to keep up their strength so they are not so vulnerable afterwards.


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This werewolf has just shifted and has just fallen on almost all fours due to the pain. A young werewolf like this one hasn't built up a lot of pain tolerance quite yet. He is strong though and is breathing through it to recover. A lone werewolf like this one must be careful shifting because there might be others around. This is why the safest thing to do is to shift under the cover of a forest. Hopefully the trees hide him from the eyes of others.

I put a lot of thought and time into this and had a lot of fun doing something like this for myself for once. I've had this concept in my head for awhile now and I've decided to summit it to the Werewolf Calendar's contest. I've been working on this off and on since the end of July and just finished it about a week ago. The concept came to me when I was studying anatomy and was looking some werewolf pieces. I couldn't help but think how they would change their anatomy and such shifting, so yeah.
This is the smaller and watermarked version. The original scan is being sent to them through e-mail. Wish me luck :).

Also I need someone's opinion. I forgot to add the cold breath coming from his mouth. Should I still add it or should I leave it be?
And as always, critiques are most welcome and appreciated!


Thanks :),
Danea

Final Projects

Well here is my Lopari final design that I did for my final project in my animal anatomy class.
The Lopari is a combination of a leopard, a giraffe, and a tapir. The lopari is a carnivore and is a bit bigger than a normal leopard. It's a odd-toed creature like the tapir and it's hoof-like claws retract in it's front paws. With its pattern, I combined a leopard and giraffe spots as well as the stripes of a baby tapir.
I do have a long story about it, but for the most part it's explained in the description in the design. It is endangered, because the Wiric had moved into it's habitat and has hunted them and their food supply to where it's hard for them to survive.

This is the illustration I did to go with the design. I decided to make a character along with the species. his Lopari is a worn down, scruffy, old one with scares showing his fights and battles with the Wiric creatures. He is also very strong though since rarely do these creatures survive to be this old these days.
He is chasing an elephant shrew like animal to show that even though the Lopari needs a lot of food to survive, due to the Wiric, it usually can only find small creatures to hunt. Because of this, Loparis are constantly hunting around for new food.
The environment that the Lopari live in is shown here too. It's sort-of like an Australian/ African savanna, desert like forest. The trees here have large trunks to save water in them since it's a very dry and hot climate with very little rain. When the wet season comes these trees absorb as much water as they can and it usually lasts them through the dry season.

Hope you all like :). Critique is much appreciated.

Wolfy studies

Before I post my final projects I thought I would post some value studies of the project I'm working on now for the Werewolf Calendar contest. If I could get some feedback on these I would really appreciate it :). The more help the better.

Zooness

Well I know that no one follows me here right now, but I'm still going to update as much as I can d:.

Anyway, here are some of my best sketches that I got out of my animal anatomy class at the zoo and science museum. I will be updating with my final project soon. Still need to watermark it and still recovering from finals week last week xD lol. Figure since these are just sketches, they don't really have to be watermarked. Enjoy!

Drew the cassowary bird here in the morning... it got out that afternoon xD lol. Yay for having a real life dinosaur roaming through the zoo and closing down 2/3s of the place xD lol.

Anyway, it seems like you can really see my progress throughout the class. The birds and reptiles are some of my favorites even though they aren't some of my favorite animals to draw. This is because they were some of the last things we drew in the class and thus some of my best. Note that these are only SOME of the sketches out of the class. These are only the best of them out of probably around 50 to 60 pages worth.

Hope you enjoy :). Will update in the next couple of days with my final projects.

Animal Anatomy Creature Update

Here is a TONNN of my progress on my creature design for my animal anatomy class at school. So far I'm really happy with this design and as you can see I'm also doing an illustration with my creature. The creature is a combination of a tapir, a giraffe, and an leopard. I'm in the final stages now for this and I will update more when I'm done :).

P.S. Some of my teacher's sketches are on here. Some of the really good anatomy sketches on the side aren't mine. The final pose drawing is drawn on by him as well.

These are basicly the final images for the design of my creature. I still have to add some things and darken some lines, but overall this is what the creature is going to look like. Do note that the patterns on the creature are not yet added yet. Also I don't know why his eye scanned in so dark.

This is some of the first stages of my design after I did a whole bunch of silhouettes of the creature. The first drawing is the stage right after the silhouette. This was an experiment with this kind of process and I found out that that I like going over the silhouette with some structure, which I did the creature design in the last post, but not this one :(. Do note that this only SOME of my process and studies. Not ALL of my process.

Here is the silhouettes with some very rough color and value studies of the illustration I am doing with the creature.

Here is some of my process of the final illustration. This is when I was working on the pose, which as you can see I based off of a leopard running.

Enjoy and please critique :). I'm willing to change some things of the creature in the future if I need :). I love this guy and will progress on his design till it has the full impact I want it to have.

Keep on going and going

I need to update this more xD lol.
Anyway and update on what happened at the art festival. Unfortunately I didn't sell anything at all, so a lot of my art is still for sell. I don't mind that nothing didn't sell because there is always next year :). Always try try again. Also I got my name out there a little and that's good enough for me.

Here is the two pieces I made for the festival but didn't sell. The first one is a watercolor of a bear. I know it still needs a lot of work, but with the time I had and my lack of practice in watercolor at the time it's better than I thought it would be. I'm willing to fix it later in the future for sure though :). The second one is a graphite drawing of a wolf I did in the last 2 days, so it's not to the best of my ability. I really want to work on this one when I get time so I can feel better about selling it.

For some character design progress pieces. This design I had to do in 2 or 3 days for a contest. I can't upload the final piece here, but you can find it on my DA if you want :). I went through so many ideas to get to the final product. I'll upload it here after July 7th if I don't make it to the semi-finals. I'll upload more in the next week or so of another character design I'm working on.

Sorry for the cropping :(. Didn't scan in right.

Head designs I was working on. You get a cookie if you can read my handwriting xD.

Festival Time!

Well it's once again time to get ready for the Colfax Music and Arts Festival on June 5th ^_^! This year I have more time to get some original pieces done beforehand, which I will post later on.
Right now here some some pieces I did during the school year that will be there as well :). Prints are available, and the still lifes shown will only be sold as prints for now.

Also, during this summer I will be getting more into fanart and cuter things. I love cute things, so I plan and drawing and maybe selling some chibi key chains. I also really want to get into illustrating novels, so doing some fan art for stuff will really help with that I think :). If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see from me, let me know. Also do note that I am open for commissions. I always am!
I will post more the closer it gets to the festival. If you live in Colorado, please feel free to come. There will be lots of art there and it will be a lot of fun. It is located at on the RMCAD campus ^_^.

Up and running - more to come

Well here we go, this blog is now up and running. It probably won't be updated much, since I have very little time, but hopefully it will help to get my art our there.

Anyway, I need to study for midterms next week. Hopefully after that, I will have more to post. I am going to rent out a high quality camera and get some good pictures of my work up around the web. I also REALLY need to get going on watermarking more of my stuff.

All of that will help me finally get my portfolio website up and out to the public.

Once again, I probably won't be here much due to school and not having much time, but when I do get time, I shall update people with what I am working on and everything.

More to come :)...