Kara Pretorius Creature Contest Entry

Hello, My name is Kara Pretorius.

For my creature design I combined the features of a few insects and ended up with this little guy. The insects I used as reference were the hornet, fly, praying mantis and the hickory horned devil, which is the caterpillar form of the Regal Moth.


I looked to the praying mantis for the general shape of the creature, his arms and antennae. I also found a really nice photograph of a brown mantis, which I thought would be a good basis for the colour scheme. The fly provided the smaller set of antennae above his mouth. For the mandibles, wings and the shape of his eyes I looked at the hornet. The tendrils coming out of his head were inspired by the hickory horned devil. For his mouth I found a really cool drawing reference in a piece of fan art of Baxter, from TMNT, by Rayph Beisner.

I’m going to be building a maquette of this character and am looking forward to testing my skills and getting some practice in with sculpting. My dream job would be to design characters and work in the lab as a sculptor.

Good luck to all entrants!

P.S. Thank you to Stan Winston School of Character Arts for providing the opportunity, to anyone and everyone, to enter this competition and for taking the time to go through all the submissions. I didn't know there were so many online courses available. It really makes the opportunity to learn from the best available to people, like me, in other parts of the world.

Comments

  • Oh lord I certainly would not like to come face to face with this creature !!
    Great drawing !,
  • Sinister !!!  great shapes ! ( blacker eyes and darker inside mouth would give it even more effect ) I really like the pastel colors.
  • Thanks Brigitte! and thanks for the valuable input John. I'm busy sculpting this guy now. I might make a few changes here and there once I see him in 3D.
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