Hi VoodooDad…
http://kerembeyit.cgsociety.org/gallery/
Above is a link to some great dragons…Check them out when you have time…He has them scattered throughout his portfolio…You might draw some inspiration from them, and they might give you some good ideas for the one that you are working on…Who Knows…
Glenn
Hey! Love the River scene! Looks really awesome. The dragon looks pretty neat as well. Looking forward to seeing him completed!
Hey very nice looking dragon! Great work
Good work on that Dragon…great mats …I’ve been known to make a few Dragons in both my Scultris Thread and my Zbr Thread ( if you want some references, not that they are the greatest or anything like that.)
I like you Bridge view a lot… Dek
Thanks for all the comments, guys. I greatly appreciate it! I went back a revamped the zsphere base for the dragon. I just couldn’t stand that god-awful pose and the muscle groups didn’t look right to me. The shoulders bulged too much and the thighs didn’t bulge enough. I did like the head, but that was about it.
So here’s Dragon 2.0. Still pretty rough, but I think it’s a better base to work on.
Hi Gary 
Much better foundation to work from on this latest update…
…Just a passing thought on my part…You might make the neck longer…Will give you a chance to put a nice… S…curve in it,…with oppossing curves…which will create a nice rhythm /flow, and sense of motion in whatever pose you put the dragon in…:)…I like those wings…big enough to carry the weight…small_orange_diamond:)
Glenn
That’s great man! I like the wings.
Thank you Alex, glad you like it!
Glenn, I actually started out with a much longer neck and the s-curve you suggested, but I just couldn’t make it work. It kept coming out too thin and stretched and just didn’t look like it would support the weight of the head. I’m kind of basing this on the old Hildebrandt Brothers painting of Smaug and that definitely had that curve… I may try the curve again, but I kind of like the bulky muscles going up to the base of the skull for now. If I don’t go too far over on my poly budget, I’m wanting to add a fairly simple environment to this one. Different for me, having the environment be secondary to the character but I should be able to pull it off.
I like the wings, too by the way. I finally figured out the curvetrifill brush to fill in the membranes.
Again, thanks so much for the feedback guys. You all keep me stretching my boundaries in all directions!
Here’s another update. Refining and a little more detailing on the main body, and the start of Smaug’s golden horde!
Dragon is cool!
Reminded me some old-fashion RPG games.
Keep it up!
That’s awesome man!! The texturing is great! Really nice piece of work:D. Keep it up
Alex and Faircat, sorry I missed your posts before. I’ve been busy all afternoon and evening mixing and re-mixing materials to try to get the best effect with this thing.
Alex thank you for the comment about the texturing. I used noisemaker with different alphas for the top, bottom and wing textures. I like the way it turned out. I checked out your t-rex a few minutes ago. Major improvement! I’ll post in your thread here in a little bit with a couple of further suggestions.
Faircat, thanks man! That’s exactly what I was looking for. I was one of those d&d playing, pocket protector wearing av geeks (computer geeks didn’t start that early in life back then. A pc cost like 10000 dollars, and generally didn’t fit in one room :o) back in high school (GAWD, did I really graduate 31 years ago???) and I had a pretty extensive collection of Ral Partha and Citidel miniatures back then. Dragons were always my favorite to collect and paint. I’m wishing my dad would let me clean out his storage space, because I have a feeling they might still be there lol.
Okay ladies and gentlemen, after the aforementioned evening of editing materials I believe I’ve finally seettled on the one below. It’s a heavily edited version of Deep Bronze (kudos to whoever uploaded it to the matcap library) with texture maps traded out for flame textures and slight tweaks here and there.
This is the first organic model (of mine) that I’ve ever felt was complete. Please let me know what you all think!
One more for the night. Searching for the ever-elusive perfect angle. Also add a slight dof blur along with some lighting tweaks.
Great job so far Gary :)
Maybe emerald green glowing eyes would be a nice complementary color to those redish and golden colors that dominate the colorscheme…A little touch of green in there might really make the character of the dragon pop…Just a passing thought that might be useful to you…who knows…
Also …, Michalis wrote in my thread awhile back, that there is a new feature involved in the Transpose feature,…He said it works great for stretching and tweeking the wings…I think he said you just have to hold down ALT, SHIFT, OR CONTROL while you Rotate or Move useing the transpose feature…Can’t remember which key you are supposed to hold down, but it’s one of those three I think…Just mask the wing, and then invert the mask …Just thought I would mention that, just in case you want to shift those wings to be less symetrical or repose them or whatever…I have yet to try that method that Michalis mentioned, but will give it a try, the next time I do a Dragon…
Glenn
Glenn, thanks for the tip off on that aspect of transpose. That was one I hadn’t seen or heard about anywhere, and it gives a great organic bend to the outer part of the wings. I did them one at a time so they wouldn’t be real symmetrical and I’m very pleased with the results! I also gave the eyes that green that you suggested. Unfortunately due to my color blindness I can’t see a big difference, so if the eyes look hinky now, let me know! Thanks again!
