Development

These are my initial ideas for my armadillo/me hybrid. I don't have too many dynamic poses at the moment because I'm concentrating on content instead, I'll do dynamic poses in later development. My main point of concentration at the moment is attempting to hybridise the armour of the armadillo onto my body since it's a major aspect of the creature.

 I'm not too sure if I should go too extreme on the skull design for my character but armadillos' have elongated snouts like ant-eaters as seen in figure 7.

 Another main feature is when armadillos' stand up on their hind legs they have an unusual posture. In fugure 18 I demonstrate this with the hand position and slight slouch in back.

Life Drawings

Seven drawings over the course of two lessons. Styles vary a bit but I feel I'm comfortable with proportions.

(Thanks to Josh for his handy camera)

Armadillo Drawings

I wanted to get a better understanding of the shape, anatomy and posture of an armadillo so I did a few drawings of it in various poses and even skeletal form. (And yes I do realise I misnumbered them and that there's only 8 and not 9.)

A real prominent feature of the armadillo is the fact that it rolls up into a ball and it's whole physiology and armour are designed to let it do just that. However not all of them can do that, the South American three-banded armadillo can roll into a ball but the nine-banded armadillo (which happens to be my sub-species) can mainly just hold its breath for an impressive six minutes. I could still gather a few traits from the different sub-species and combine them into one since they're all armadillos'.

Head/face Studies

Some of these don't even look like me, I might've gotten shading or placement wrong.

Number 6 was my best attempt, all of the proportions are correct and is visible from the shading.

Hand Studies

Further sketching and trying to get the hang of depth and proportions together.

Feet Studies

It was a challenge trying to scan A3 on an A4 scanner but hey it worked somehow.

Starting from 1 and going to 6 I got a little more confident along the way with proportions and shading. The bottom of my foot has many creases making it hard to shade in.

Photoshop Lessons - Day 1 vs Day 2

Day 1 of Photoshop Phils' lesson was a bit messy on my part; maybe it was a lack of concentration or motivation but it ended in something that vaguely resembled a character:

On day 2 I asked Phil for some advice and he showed me a short example of how I could go about painting into the silhouette. It became a lot easier of a sudden and I got the hang of hitting the highlights on the character; so my second attempt turned out more successful than the first: