Creature Design - Predatory Horse

Overview

Predatory horse, designed to look vaguely familiar and thus subvert initial responses. It travels in herds and controls huge territories encompassing forests, plains, and ravines; there are very few creatures that would dare attack them. In general, the most dangerous thing to a predatory horse is a challenger to the herd's leader; this is why they have huge ridges of bone that protect their eyes, and thick scales that protect the vulnerable neck and spine, defence from the thick tusks protruding from their mouths.

[At this time, the predatory horse species has no name.]

Inspiration

Creatures:

• Horse
• Gnu/Wildebeest
• Warthog
• Lion
• Rhinoceros
• Cassowary
• Crocodile
• Iguana
• Pit Viper
• Burmese Python
• Hippocampus (Fantasy)
• Qilin (Fantasy)
• Triceratops (Extinct)
• Terrorbird (Extinct)

Disregarded:

• Sivatherium (Extinct)
• Megaloceros (Extinct)
• Cockatoo
• Bear
• Lionfish
• Harpy Eagle
• Porcupine
• Shadhavar (Fantasy)

Process

Like the sharkdog, I had trouble deciding on what direction to go with this creature. I'd envisioned multiple horns on its head, like Sivatherium, but not of the sketches I made with this in mind made it appear like a successful predator. Likewise, the lionfish spines, porcupine quills, and cockatoo crest (all to deter predators) made little sense when I wanted this creature to be powerful and feared. Thus, I began to look in different directions for inspiration, including often-overlooked animals like the warthog and the cassowary.

Collection of initial headshots. Multiple horn solutions, though not appear predatory. Once a more beaked, rhinoceros-like mouth was referenced for the more natural tusks, everything flowed a lot better.

Side-view. Figuring out body type (horse, wildebeest, lion) and feet. The raised legs were to judge how the clawed feet would look in both positions, and see if it seemed natural. The fourth design was referenced properly from a similar horse pose once things were finalised.

Added a better eye-covering protrusion in the skull. Manes: first design is inspired by a qilin statue, second is crocodilian scales, while the third is more fjord horse/zebra. The fourth is more horse based, but takes the best from the previous ideas.

Chosen side-on pose, with correct mane, eye-covering protrusion, and crocodilian scales. The front view sketch was to keep all the proportions in mind of the various protrusions - both bone features and tusks.

Eventually the front-on sketch was necessary (for my MA poster) and evolved into a more action-based pose. The first was discarded as it didn't give the impression of a predator, whilst the final one, mid-run, looks more imposing and hunter-like.

Final designs.

Design Notes:

• Heavy, three-toed feet made for powerful, bone-breaking kicks and fast running, not gripping onto prey (like cassowary/terrorbird)
• Scales for protection against attacks, generally from other horses - thicker ridges on scales covering spine/neck for added protection
• Long tail tipped with fur to whip away flies when bloodied
• Thick plate over masseter jaw muscle (inspired by iguana)
• Strong, thick bone structures protruding around sunken eyes, to protect from stabbing tusks
• Additional, small nostrils lining the overly-wide nasal cavity, for drawing deeper breaths when sprinting
• Partially reflective scales, slightly iridescent in various primary colours - useful camouflage in foliage, though they don't tend to use it for ambush predation
• Sharp, horizontal tusks used to hack into prey with a vicious side-swipe as they run alongside, inflicting dangerously deep wounds on each hit - tusks are also serrated so they cannot easily get stuck in flesh/muscle
• Tusks used for hunting prey, stripping bark from trees for additional food source, or for combat, typically when wresting control of a herd (eyes/neck would be a disastrous point to injure, thus the increased defences on both)
• If humans could successfully domesticate them, they would find the horses to be extremely loyal and protective to their trusted partners, as well as very social

The scales of this creature in the final stage were extremely tedious to create. I used a downloaded snake-scale texture brush to give a semblance of texture on the first colour pass, but the actual detail stemmed from looking at reference images of iguanas and crocodiles. The second, front-facing horse was somewhat faster as I utilised the clone tool and took a base from the previous horse to build on, though it still required a lot of fixing up.

Reflection

• Focusing on headshots at the start made the design process faster
• Looking for wider inspiration and trying new ideas in each headshot added to the final design
• Again, having a broad understanding of what the creature would be like - predatory, unlike its main inspiration - made decisions of what creatures to involve a lot easier
• Drawing over a previous sketch on a lower opacity layer to carry over a basic idea is definitely a useful technique
• Clone tool allows basic textures to be copied, definitely not acceptable to leave them untouched afterwards though, they need fresh details
• Scale textures are tedious to create, but are worth the time and effort. I'll probably try them again on another creature to see if I can refine the process a little more
• Action pose was very interesting to draw as I made it a little while after completing the original side-view, and had to reference all my notes again to make sure I didn't forget any design points