Models

[Unfortunately I do not have any in-progress photos of these models.]

Mharos/Yule Cat model. Made of Citadel/Kneadetite Green Stuff, a two-part putty that forms into slowly hardening plastic. It is built over an armature covered in tinfoil, then covered in green stuff, and detailed/smoothed with a scalpel that I have become much more capable with. Green stuff itself is mildly unpleasant to work with after Chavant clay and Super Sculpey. It is sticky, requiring frequent lubrication with water, and does not bond extremely well to itself, leaving noticeable ridges I had to try and plane down with my scalpel. With the tools I had at my disposal though, I am extremely pleased with how this model turned out.

 

Initial sketches for the end model. It felt necessary to make the creature able to stand up of its own accord, so the stronger tail was used instead of trying to make it balance its weight on the fairly spindly legs.

Flesh-toned Super Sculpey of a Celestial Stag. The detailing of it was extremely tedious, but very rewarding as it brought the whole model together. One of the legs and one antler frequently snapped, requiring patching up and re-baking in the oven to harden the sculpey. For my first go with the material I am pleased with the turn out but it was extremely aggravating to re-bake after small changes and then have to wait for it to cool down enough to be used again.

The two different materials have increased my knowledge of modelling. I think I will be much more capable with Chavant clay now as it is not as loose as these materials when they are malleable, and it holds its weight a lot better. Green stuff is a fun, if annoying, material. I really like the effect that painting can give to it as a final model, too, so that might be something I return to in the future. Super Sculpey, perhaps. Maybe not for everything, but anything that specifically requires being hard in a certain pose would definitely benefit from sculpey. Chavant's capability to be altered at any point is definitely most useful for reference models though, allowing for different poses and with less of a shiny texture so that lighting might be more accurate in the piece.

Seascape

Based on a Sea Leviathan attacking a group of Akhlut. The thumbnail was drawn from a photo I took in Ingleton Falls, for the texture I could see in the rocks. Moving from long images to A5 hurt the composition a little but quickly came through again.

Partially phototextured. Every major part is on a separate layer for ease of change but the overlayed white seafoam complicated things a little. It was very fast to complete though, compared to the others. The idea was solid and it was mainly environment details more than difficult creature textures or poses.

Final. The seaweed at the front does not look entirely as I wanted, but the colours are pleasant and it does look rather like it fits in at the ocean. The Sea Leviathan takes main focus and the Akhlut running are noticed second. I had wanted something to show the scale of the Akhlut compared to humans, as well, for a better sense of scale, but I could not happily find somewhere to fit that in. Instead, scale has to be based on the Leviathan and the Akhlut alone, but it does show the significant difference between them and that works as the main element of the piece.

The Chase

This image moved through various thumbnails looking for a solid visual impact. I wanted the focus of this image to be the scale of the Roc compared to the feline Talian, who is also huge in comparison to a human. The humans of the piece are what keep the scale in line. The original thumbnail did not give the correct impact, but the other explorations went away from this idea and then returned to its general theme as it fitted the scenario best.

This is the mid-way point, before detailing. Lighting was sorted, with the shadow of the Roc laying over the rear of the Talian in a threatening manner. The actual pose of the cat and the bird took an extremely long time to entirely figure out but a lot of references finally solved this. I had originally wanted to model the pose but references would have been necessary for that anyway.

The final image. I don't know that the shade over the Talian entirely comes through as being caused by the great size of the Roc, but I don't know how to fix that. Lighting has become an interesting point to look into though, and this exploration has made me more confident with my knowledge of it thus far. The character is Joy, the Talian is Stagger, and they were drawn from their orthographic poses I created. It is a breakthrough in my human rendering, and even the pose and anatomy felt easier after this MA year. Though an intimidating piece to plan, it was very fun to colour and render through to this point.

Sunlit Rykos

Riding the highs of completing the last challenging piece - the unicorn versus the werewolf - I went for more complicated lighting, but with a main subject that I understood. Thus I went for a Rykos (my horned dog creature) as I knew I could get a good, recognisable pose with solid references of actual dogs, giving a clear visual insight into its personality.

This image is very similar to previous sketches, just mildly more detailed. The horns needed the clay model for perspective as I could not figure out exactly where each part would appear. The lighting is very basic and for a while I was happy with this image until I considered it against the previous, and decided to return to it and find a solid lighting reference to imitate.

 

This final image is A5, and is what made me return to the unicorn piece to resize, so that they would match. The light is much more dramatic, with forced perspective from the blurred leaves close to the camera. The flipped image felt best of the two, and I really like the outcome. Even though it is not fully realistic (I am not entirely happy with the horns but suspect I just need more practice with them) I am very pleased with what I managed to achieve for a more rendered version of my creature.