As stated in my one and only DeviantArt journal entry, I am a mentor in animal anatomy and creature design over on ConceptArt.org. Lately, my students ("mentees," as we call them) and I have been sketching together on Open Canvas 1.1. If you haven't heard of it, it's a decent--and free--digital art program (much better than MS Paint, much more limited than Photoshop) that has a networking program, allowing people to sketch on the same digital canvas through the miracle of the internets. In addition to its use as a teaching tool, it's also a heck of a lot of fun!
The rather crude skeletons and musculature on the right side of the image were created as demonstrations for my mentee. The hand-shaped creature and the beans in the middle was part of a larger sequence of absurdity, the type that can only happen when people are interacting online. The name "Stanley" below the middle bottom creature is related to another episode of randomness. Incidentally, that creature design also shows the influence of all those dragon-wolf type creatures that you see so often around DeviantArt.
The creature on the middle left, the skeleton, is a beetle rhinoceros, as opposed to a rhinoceros beetle.
Nothing much to say about the rest of this, except that it was very fun.
`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
Sta.sh
Particularly the beastly looking frey chameleon-esque guy in the lower-right,
If you're serious about learning animal anatomy, I highly recommend Eliot Goldfinger's book.
The mentoring is through, unfortunately. It was hard for both me and the students to consistently find the time and motivation. Here's a link to the thread, anyway: [link]
You can download OpenCanvas here: [link]
Niiiice.
Incidentally, is Stanley related to Ammit?
Really, though, I was not thinking about functionality at all when I drew that. I just wanted to draw a skeleton that had a badass ischium. You don't see many of those in creature designs.
Stanley is related to Ammit, but only very distantly. Eighth grand-cousins nine times removed, or something like that. Plus, Stanley would be more likely to lick you excitedly--and perhaps offer you some legal advice--than devour your unworthy soul.
A badass ischium? Please tell me that was intentional.
But yeah, that doesn't show up much in creature design. All hail creative creature concept artists!
Hehe, I'm imagining some sort of Monty-Pythonesque dialogue here. "I am the Devourer of the Dead. Some call me... Stanley".