I have been making this dragon to put into real footage and I like how it looks, but I was hoping for some tips to make it look even better. I do not have a fancy background because it is for film footage, so please try to ignore it.
Thanks!
-Jake Wesley
jakewesley.webs.com
Hi McRunt,
what you have now is a good start, but I think it can be a lot better
As with any creature modeling, anatomy is very important. Even if the creature doesn’t exist in real life, a good understanding of anatomy can make your creature more believeable. I’d really recommend opening up google image search and looking up ‘animal anatomy’ or something like that.
Anyway, here are a few things that I think you should focus on:
-Wings:
I think they’d look a lot more natural with a bat-wing structure
http://www.molvis.indiana.edu/C687_S99/homology_wings.gif
As you can see, the wing has a well defined elbow and fingers. All of the fingers stick out from one point, as opposed to coming from several places like you have.
Another thing, since wings are a lot like arms, they should be located just about at the same level as the base of the neck / collar bone.
Right now, you have the wings placed about half way down the body
-Jaw:
one thing I quickly noticed was the lack of volume under the jaw - it looks extremely thin, especially at the very front
A lot of skulls follow the same generic shape, so I’d recommend you take a look at how dog/horse/dinosaur skulls look, and match the head to something along those lines
-Legs:
I think the legs really look out of place. Again, reference is the best thing for you.
http://www.jplegacy.org/encyc/novel-dinosaurs/Velociraptor.jpg
http://www.molvis.indiana.edu/C687_S99/homology_wings.gif
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs11/i/2006/200/b/e/Bird_Anatomy__right_leg_by_callmeLittleDregon.gif
Hope that helps, and good luck with your dragon!
To me the two items that stand out are the placement of the wings, and the bulk of the torso. I agree with what was said above, the wings should be further to the front. I also think the torso should have a bit more bulk, either showing signs of a ribcage or a plump belly from eating defenceless villages. Also, it might help to use google images to research what others think a dragon should look like, have a look at the dragon in Sintel.
Agree with most of the above, you may need to make the main part of the body bigger and fatter overall if you’re not really after a serpent or spindly look. His legs also look like they don’t have much in the way of muscle.
After that you should look into UVmapping and if you’re using BI, using nodes to mix together materials and textures for a more sophisticated shading.
Thanks for all the suggestions guys!
I have moved the wings foreward aned am adding the rib cage look. I want this to have a little more of a serpant look about it. I got a lot of ideas for it from this image when I started. I want to use nodes to fix the materials and shading, but I’m not very experienced with nodes. Do you know of any good tutorials covering this subject exactly? As far as the mouth goes, I want it to look like the one in the picture, but I’m not sure how that ties in with the actual bone structure that jeepster was talking about.
You do notice in the picture that the eyes are more towards the front above the jawline and that the part of the head above has just enough bulk to accommodate both the eyes and (at least), thin airways within the head from the nostrils (which would seem to be near the very front), and at least a minimal brain size.
The head doesn’t have a lot of bulk like what Jeepster posted, but if that’s what you’re going towards take a look of how the bone structure in done when you look closely at the head in the picture.
references! search some references 