Something I made for Weekend Challenge # 188 (“at the zoo” theme):
I was just going for fun, cute, silly, and something very quick in this one,
plus experimenting with yet another different style. Around an hour of
modeling with several hours spent on materials, lighting, test renders, etc.
Pure Blender 2.41 (internal glow plugin + rBricks plugin used).
RobertT
Lovely!!
Makes me think of VenomGfx’ work a bit…
I’d love to see them move a bit…
Hey, nice to see you trying a new style - and I really like the first result! The colours are beautiful and these are very cute giraffes.
I think a simplified version of the typical giraffe pattern would improve it, the procedural texture looks strange - and the wall feels a bit too dominant, but that’s just my opinion.
ITS HIDEOUS!!!
haha just kiddin… Its think its great! Nice peace of work, bud as you know i love all of you work.
Cheers Alex
Grass, walltexture and giraffeskin aren’t there yet (good, but not RobertT-good).
Amazing toonstyle and colors. I totally dig the colors.
Cheers,
Sago
Only thing I would change is the bricks. I think they look a bit amateur-ish (no offense).
Nice piece! Great style. 
quote everything! very very nice job 
Nice work.
My main problem with it is the scaling of the procedural on the head of the small giraffe.
One question: how did you do the trees? I suppose some duplicated (dupliverted?) objects. But how about the colour? Rampshader?
Yeah, I agree with Sago. It’s almost there. Just something is off. Not quite sure what it is though.
Nicely done again.
BgDM
Let me give you a hand. 8)
Walltexture
Despite the highlighted parts and the shadows it remains flat. Also the brickpattern isn’t very appealling (but yes, it should stay simple)
Grass
Too straight and spiky. And even though the image is toony I think less thick would be better (so more realistic)
Giraffe skin
Stretched and blurry in some places. Some weird shapes and not clear enough. In the face it’s very good (cause there it should be less visible).
That’s it.
You know this wasn’t meant to diss you, RT (you know I love you and your work), BgDM just needed a little guidance. 
All in all, top quality work.
Sago
Well stated Sago. I guess I just didn’t look at it long enough.
BgDM
Cool, thanks for the feedback guys
I intentionally did some things very differently with this, which included cutting some corners and keeping things very simple. I had about four hours to finish it for the WC since I budgeted the rest of my free time for my F1 project (which I intend to be epic).
The brick texture/nor on the back is produced by the rBricks plugin, and I liked how quirky it looked since quirkiness was probably the one requirement I had in mind for this one. I knew the nor it produced wasn’t too convincing, but it was within the quirky stylistic range I wanted for this piece.
The giraffe skin shader was much better defined at one point, but in playing around with the settings it became less distinct and even moreso and stretched after messing with the meshes.
The grass was two simple particle meshes overlaying each other at different angles with a third ground plane underneath for some additional color variation. As for the leaves, I made one leaf and hit Shift D a lot
Part of me always liked these type of CG-ish type of characters. Someone mentioned venomgfx. I love his work This scene is nowhere near that quality though, but it wasn’t meant to be either; it’s probably more in keeping with the neat little “doodles” Zarf has been doing in the WIP forum. For me it was like a fun little break on a Sunday afternoon.
Far more serious stuff is on the way of course…
RobertT
I agree about the crit said about the brick wall and the grass, but other than that very lovely render and very nice change of style from your usual stuff (which is good too, but it’s always nice to see people altering their style from time to time).
i love it man!
wouldnt change a thing, but you forgot the tails, add the tails and then it would be perfect, haha.
this is also about a billion times better then most of the animal book art out their for childeren. please for the sake of the children today, create a childrens animal book full of these bright, colorful, cartoonish creatures. i’d buy it!!!
