#schoolism course

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Red river pigs and some warthogs! 🐗

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Week six done! This time, we had to combine elephants with another animal. I picked a red river pig since their coloration is mammoth-adjacent. Plus, they're cool-looking animals! I also tried some more detailed rendering, a more sophisticated layout, and I'm beginning to approach a workable fur texture. This week concludes the new designs; for the remainder of the class, we'll be working on a narrative illustration. By the way, that text blurb from the image is below the cut!

The Red Forest Elephant lives in the boundary between forest and grassland. Its preferred diet consists of roots and shallow aquatic plants which it accesses by digging with tusks. The short trunk is quite dexterous and can be used to manipulate objects or search the bottom of a river. Red Forest elephants live in small family groups and are skittish when it comes to human interaction. Males have larger tusks which are used for display and foraging.

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More sketches, this time of telescope butterfly goldfish. I'm also noodling with ways to make my digital sketches look a little less dull and lifeless.

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Presenting the Ghaldfish

Here's the reason I drew gharials and goldfish. This is my work for assignment 2 from Terryl Whitlatch's Creature Design course on Schoolism. I definitely struggled with the muscular anatomy because there do not seem to be good resources for this information compared to mammalian tetrapods. I looked at vet textbooks, my personal collection of artist anatomy books, and even searched through academic papers but I have yet to find a definitive guide. There is some interesting stuff happening with their hips and legs--for example, they don't have glutes--so I definitely want to keep searching. And don't even get me started on fish! Did you know fish have hips right under their heads? Although I'm frustrated at how hard it can be to find basic information, I'm really enjoying the puzzle of figuring out the muscles and bones of creatures. Onto the next section!

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Comparative Anatomy Studies

I'm following a digital course by the incredible Terryl Whitlatch about creature design. This is some homework from the first lesson. We had to draw a gestural rig, skeleton, muscular system, and surface of both a human and fictional tetrapod (mine is based heavily on a dog), My brain is currently broken by trying to match muscles across both frames. Also, every anatomy reference ever skips fat for some reason?? That seems like a massive oversight given that it's at least 10% of a human body, but usually 25% or more. What a bizarre omission. Anyway, up next is some type of human/tetrapod hybrid!

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Lesson 4 in the bag! This time we were instructed to combine either dogs and dinosaurs or cats and birds. I broke the mold a little and went for a pterocat. I wanted to combine the shredded-yet-beanbag body composition of a big cat with the gangly form of a pterosaur. Does it make biological sense? Absolutely not! And yet, I'm quite pleased with this. The design does feel constrained a bit; I feel I could push the forms and exaggerate the features more, but it's challenging to think about while also constructing the anatomy from the ground up.

I may pause here and do an ecorche study of either canine or feline anatomy since I really want to understand it well!

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What if corvid, but also dragon?

This week's assignment was a combination of dinosaurs and birds. I wanted to try making an anatomically feasible dragon, so I combined a crow with a generic therapod and a touch of microraptor. I could have been way more creative with this (hummingbird meets sauropod?) but this week was absolute chaos and it drained my creative energy. Since birds are descendants of therapods, the notable changes here are under the hood. I borrowed features from both saurischian and bird pelvises which should allow room in the torso for flight muscles while also supporting that big tail. I probably should have fused more elements in the torso for stability, but oh well.

As per usual, this assignment is brought to you by Terryl Whitlatch's Creature Anatomy course on Schoolism.

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Sketches for the upcoming lesson! Did you know elephants are digitigrade? Also, they like birthday parties.