Very good start! Geez, I remember my early quadrapeds. Looked like a matress had mated with an elephant. Yours is progressing much better! 
The legs are extremely stocky at the moment. You might consider bulging them a bit.
I like the parasite! Very pointy! 
great parasite 
for the beast U should make the knees bigger. It seams that legs are only cylinders, big knees will break this impression
take it easy with those pegs man, thats my steelo! yea for a month this is great. I started when i was like 13 yrs old and i am now 19 and i could never model organic shistuff until i went to a year of figure drawing! keep it up. :buttrock:
Wow, thanks for all the awesome feedback!:bounce: I noticed the legs looked kinda weird, but i couldnt figure out what to do with them. I’ll try bulging the knees when i get home from work. I still need to figure out a way to pose my creatures though, is that what bones are used for, and if so, can someone please point me in the direction of a good bones tutorial. And once again, thanks!
Here is a minor update. I’m going to have to remake the parasite’s body, i messed it up and couldnt undo. Anyways, heres the pic. And i dont want to sound repetitive but i could really use some crits 
Hey Baked,
Wish I could model like that after only a month!!
Impressive.
Crits for you:
The knees feel odd, they seem a bit unnatural, if when you model you think about the underlying bone structure and where the muscles have to be for the character to be able to move, it will help you when deciding where you need skin folds and muscle definition.
the corner of the mouth is a bit too sharp, if you go back in and add some more poly’s to give you something to work with. Chances are that you can select the edge that defines the corner and chamfer it. While you’re at it i’d put some flab in those lips and thiken up the eyebrows.
Hope that’s good crit for you, personally I think you have done an awesome job for having just started with max.
Cheers
Thank you man, see, it shows i dont really know all that much, but this is the kind of thing i need to learn this stuff. I learned almost everything i know about 3d modeling is from lurking these forums, and participating in this challenge. Anyways, here are some more updates.
the wagon, yes i know it sucks, but i wanted to keep it simple. I bet you can see how i figured out what that torus knot was for…
Hi there Bakednotphried.
Here’s a couple of crits and suggestions.
A good thing to do would be to rent some dvd’s like Dinosaur by disney and take a look at there turn around models, try to figure out how and why they put there details where they do.
Everything starts somewhere. You have to put alot of time and effort in all the pieces of your model. Don’t be affraid of trying stuff. Save using increment and go back when you need to.
For know my crit on your model is to try and play with the proportions a bit. There are certain rules to respect. Normaly you know it’s ok when it feels right. Right know I feel theres a problem with the lengh of the body and the size of the head. When that’s done choose a portion of the model and add polys, extrude, bevel, chamfer and move the vertexes around to get definition.
Hope this helps!
Hey, great use of the torus on those knots!
It’s good to see you’re getting a nice handle on things. I don’t want to preach, but make sure you save multiple copies of your work as you go, so you don’t have a repeat of the parasite thing. In max particualrly I find that if something freezes during autobackup, you can lose your whole file. As it is, the turtle I’m working on has 66 incremental .max files! (Okay, so I’m paranoid). At the very least, it gives you something to go back to if you want to try something different.
The model is coming along. You need to round off some edges, like the wagon and it’s wheels, but the beast itself is getting there. I’ve found teeth can be a lot easier to do if you model them as one big strip and put indents in for the spacing.
It can sometimes look a lot more natural than modelling every tooth.
I hope this helps!
I really think using refrences or sketches would be a good thing. I personally swear by drawing out completly what it is I plan on making. All of the pro’s make full character drawings before they even start modeling (not that I’m a pro by any means).
I really think you need some sort of reference material. :shrug:
@ Marc
I’ve been watching Final Fantasy, and Shrek quite a bit now that i’ve started playing with 3d studio max, i watch shrek now and think, i know how they did that now, but when i watch final fantasy, i’m totally dumbfounded. Anyways, its kinda hard to rent dvds when you live 2 hrs from the nearest video rental place… I’ve been playing with the size of the head, i think i just need to make it smaller. Thanks for the crits.
@ erilaz
Actually i have been saving multiple copies, but the parasites old body just didnt really match with the beast, so i remade him anyways, i only have about 9 incremental .max files though…
@ zro-1
I made a few sketches, but i dont have a scanner, and i cant transfer from 2d to 3d very well. thanks anyways.
A month in and you’re already doing well, man. My crits are pretty much along the same lines as everyone else’s. Reference material never ever hurts. You may be two hours away from a video store (I’m not going into how much that amazes me) but the internet has loads of reference. National geographic would be a good place to start for Elephants and Dinosaurs and what not. My main crit, apart from what others have mentioned, is the rib cage of your beast. It seems to never end, look at an image of a Greyhound dog, and you can see a definate shape of where the rib cage begins and ends. The front chest is very thick, and then, at the last rib, begins to taper down until it starts to taper back out towards the pelvis. Your beast, while much fuller and heavier, would have a similar skeletal structure. If you lengthen the beast this may help, but start thinking about the underlying anatomy of it, and that’ll help out a lot more. Everybody in these forums at one point, was in your shoes, so keep it up!
Sincerely,
Merlin
I know it’s hard to believe i’m 2 hours from a video rental place, actually its only around an hour and a half. I live in a small town of about 150 ppl and the nearest city is that far away. I havent even thought about the ribs yet, but that will be the next major thing i’ll do to my model. I thickened up the eyebrows, added some lips, and remade my teeth. I also added something to the cart. I know it all needs more work.
More of the story:
The parasites are unfeeling creatures, they treat their beasts like dirt. They use these beasts for everything, when one dies (and this happens often) it is divided up for food, that is where the cart comes in. The beasts live in constant fear and pain, always hauling around their butchered family. Oh, yeah, the spike on the parasites tail is used for acceleration, if the beast isnt going fast enough, just stab it in the ass!
Anyways, another update: (and keep those crits comming, i’m learning a lot)
Still coming along well!
This is not a crit, more of an idea I had.
What if you shrunk down your parasite, and had hundreds of the suckers on the beasts back? i just think that would look cool. Or maybe have the large one, and hundreds of little baby ones, crawling down the rope to get at the food?
Just my two cents! 
That is a really awesome idea, but i think that the parasite already looses too much definition when it is this small. Mabye if i made some low poly parasites or something. Thanks, i’m gonna try that though
I dont think i’ll be able to work on this before the end of the contest. I think i got pretty far, and i learned a lot. I’m still happy even though i didnt finish.
@erilaz I tried to have a bunch of little ones, i made a bunch of low poly ones with exagerated features, but no detail showed up on the render, they just looked like little brown blobs… I’ll have to scrap that idea until i learn more.
Anyways, i’m looking foreward to the next challenge, i bet i could finish it, and i’m always trying to learn, and i think that this is better than a class .
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