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M0AI — Open Canvas Fun
Published: 2008-11-15 07:12:16 +0000 UTC; Views: 5804; Favourites: 91; Downloads: 163
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Description
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.
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Comments: 41
Damn, this just made me realize that i need to step my "anatomy" game up...these are awesome.
Particularly the beastly looking frey chameleon-esque guy in the lower-right,
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Thanks!
If you're serious about learning animal anatomy, I highly recommend Eliot Goldfinger's book.
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For the mentoring, or for just playing in Open Canvas?
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]
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That's too bad. And my being on the opposite side of the world wouldn't make things easier. Thanks for the link, though.
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I saw that yellow thing and I coudln't keep myself from taking a closer look.
Niiiice.
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Beautiful! I really like the pseudo-oviraptor thingie. And the beetle rhino... you know, that's an awesome idea. These could be the alternate future descendants of titanotheres. But why is the pelvis so large?
Incidentally, is Stanley related to Ammit?
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Thanks for the comments, man! As for the beetle rhino's pelvis, we were wondering about that in the posts below. Piatnitskysaurus thinks its an attachment point for huge ass muscles.
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.
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You're welcome!
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".
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Well, then, by golly, go sketch!
Thanks for the comment!
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Awesome creature designs, as always. I'm not sure if I can single out any favorites though; they're all really cool in their own different ways.
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Great concepts, it's so hard to choose, but I have to say I like the top-left one best, I just like it's whisker/eyelashes and it's spiky back!
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Yeah, he's an odd hybrid. A giant land reptile with huge lower incisors, and whiskers!
Thanks very much!
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WHOA, these are all SO COOL!! After my long hours spent observing the Arthropodires and Coleoptorays in their natural habitat, I'm especially partial to the Beetle Rhinoceros, as you may imagine. 
I'm also really digging the oviraptorian beak on the fella at top-middle. And the skeletal muscles on the gentleman at bottom-right wouldn't look out of place in an Eliot Gould anatomy treatise (though the demon and hexapodal lizard clinging to his limbs just might). The nautilus tail on Mr. Bottom Left is divine...Fat storage, perhaps?
Great energy and sensitivity in Stanley's pose...Ahhhh, they're all great!
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Thank you, as always, for your lavish praise and support, good buddy Mr. Tapir. You're one of my favorite internet friends.
Brontotheres are one of my favorite groups of extinct animals. They're always sneaking into my designs whenever I draw large, bulky animals with head ornaments. I suspect that the "extra" pair of front limbs originated in an unusual, but quite persistent, mutation that caused the pectoral girdle of the embryo to double. Though some forms of this mutation were disastrous and completely hindered the animal's ability to move, others, ancestral to the form pictured here, were actually beneficial. Having two sets of forelimbs allowed the head to grow much larger and heavier, with enormous mandibles and fantastic head ornaments, undoubtedly used for sexual display. The dual scapulae remain closely integrated, and the forelegs on either side tend to move as a unit, to avoid tripping over itself. The function of the enormously hypertrophied ischium, though, is anyone's guess!
The Oviraptor-Lagosuchus-frog guy was basically handed to me by an inspiration elf. You know, those guys who place a basically fully-formed idea in your brain, so you don't really have to work at all to bring it into being. It just comes out on its own. Really, I had the whole pose and basic shapes sketched out in less than a minute for that guy. It was awesome!
Who is this Eliot Gould? I searched him and only found an actor.
Stanley was very fun, as well. I was extremely happy with how he turned out. He's a hyena-hippopotamus-bobcat hybrid, but to spare his feelings we tell him he's a Labrador retriever. He is also under the illusion that he's my lawyer. (I SAID that there was some random shit going on in this drawing!)
Thanks again, man!
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OMG--would you believe I actually overlooked the duplicate forelimb pairs in this drawing?! I had to double-check to see what you're talking about, but now that I get it, I really like it. Opens up a lot of possiblities for heavy features at the fore end...I'm picturing something almost like a submarine conning tower, or perhaps a kinked neck like a giraffe weevil. re: that oversized ischium--perhaps this creature originally had doubled hind limbs as well, and the aft pair were eventually elminated...?
D'oh!--I meant Eliot Goldfinger ([link] ). The actor's name threw me.
You're very welcome, btw--it's always a pleasure to comment on your work because there's so much great stuff to respond to! I appreciate your insight and support as well.
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Ah, Eliot Goldfinger. I know him well. In fact, he's my main animal anatomy reference.
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I had my suspicions! I love that guy.
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I could imagine the ischium forms muscle attachments for the hindlimb, giving it an enormous ass.
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And what kind of organism doesn't benefit from an enormous ass, I aks you? I have personally been saved by mine on countless occassions, and of course use it for display, feeding, defense, etc.
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oh, it took me awhile to understand the 'feeding' part (seeing as you would sit down to eat dinner), very good
But yeah, I imagine mr beetlerhino to have enormoulsy powerful back legs powered by a really huge ass by the looks of that hip.
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That's a possibility. Something is definitely happening at this guy's hind end.
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Hmmm....maybe a frog-Lagosuchus mixed with a highly derived Oviraptorid?
Thanks for the comment!
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Yeah! I think slimy (mucous-membrane-skinned?) dinosaurids is something untapped, man!
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Shameless plug:
[link]
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ohhh, dude! I missed that last sentence!!!
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Ah yes, the little known secondarily non-amniotic offshoot of Ornithodira...
Actually, my own little concept for this guy (thought up after I drew him, though), is that he's a member of a neo-amniote radiation that occurs about 60 million years in the future. All, or most amniotes have been wiped out, so certain groups of amphibians evolved to refill those niches. He's actually a highly-derived anuran.
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woah, you lost me with the names! MUST .. LEARN .. FASTER ...
...*read read read* wow, that's a pretty cool idea, once I understand what you mean!!! By non-amniotic do you mean post-amphibious? As in neoamniote being a new amphibious offshoot?
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Amniotes are animals that have an amniotic sack, a membrane that holds in moisture as the embryo develops. That means that amniotes can reproduce on dry land, because their eggs hold moisture inside. Non-amniotes, of which the amphibians are the only surviving representatives, do not have a moisture-holding membrane, and can only lay eggs where there is enough moisture in the environment to sustain them. The evolution of amniotes is what allowed vertebrates to truly colonize the land.
My "neo-amniotes" are just a second group of animals that also evolved an amniotic membrane. They don't actually exist...yet!
And Ornithodira is the clade of Archosaurs that includes dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and a bunch of little skinny running forms that those groups evolved from.
Sorry if I just told you anything that you already knew!
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No, it's very informative! So is it a misconception then when I assume that the egg walls of amphibians are permeable to the environment?
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Ah, I also see now how the mouth is formed! I though it was a beak, prehiously, somewhat hadrosaurlike.
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