Speculative evolution

This project was started as a "speculative evolution" project, I designed two creatures with the intention to show what life could look like on earth in several million years. At the end of this journey I put together "expedition notes" like I was a natural history illustrator having traveled into the future. I enjoyed working on this project a great deal and I hope you will enjoy seeing my process!

The images above are the final result of my 16-week long project. Below I will explain how I got to this point: from concept to render. 

I decided to design two creatures, one of which would continue into a 3D phase. This is the first creature I designed. I started out with a prompt I made up myself to restrict myself somewhat so I wouldn't end up with too many options. The prompt for this creature was "coastal ungulate", a hoofed animal that lives in floodplains and is adapted to live in and around water often too salty to drink. I began with some fast thumbnails and picked one of those to iterate upon. I based colour palettes on existing animals and created patterns that fit the animal. 

My second design followed the prompt "arboreal canine", a dog-like creature that lives and hunts from the trees. It would live in the same environment as the hoofed creature and have adaptations for climbing trees like a prehensile tail. I followed a similar design process in which I made thumbnail sketches, iterated upon my favourites and then focused on one of those. I make a skeletal and muscle study to help me with my later sculpting process. 

To establish the environment and creatures I painted this piece. It shows their natural behavior and the type of environment they'd live in. 

Next up was sculpting my creature. I used Zbrush to sculpt and pose it and Maya to retopologize and UV map the model. I rendered fur with Maya's Xgen. I brought the model into substance painter for the colours. Next I brought it back into Maya to create a render using the Arnold renderer. I modelled plants which I textured using Photoshop to dress up the scene. 

I ended up making two renders which I brought into Photoshop for touch-ups. These process views show the before and after the Photoshop pass.

Thank you for viewing my work, I really loved working on this every step of the way and I hope you liked seeing it!