I went with an animatic for the basic composition. The environment will be a swamp and the characters are standing in water. The placements are basic and the final poses will be much more extreme. I’m not personally a believer in the pygmies killing a sauropod in the late 50s but I’ve always wanted to do this image so it’s a great excuse. I did a model for the skulls over the weekend and hope to start on the other elements now that I have the animatic.
I went with an animatic for the basic composition. The environment will be a swamp and the characters are standing in water. The placements are basic and the final poses will be much more extreme. I’m not personally a believer in the pygmies killing a sauropod in the late 50s but I’ve always wanted to do this image so it’s a great excuse. I did a model for the skulls over the weekend and hope to start on the other elements now that I have the animatic.
I went with an animatic for the basic composition. The environment will be a swamp and the characters are standing in water. The placements are basic and the final poses will be much more extreme. I’m not personally a believer in the pygmies killing a sauropod in the late 50s but I’ve always wanted to do this image so it’s a great excuse. I did a model for the skulls over the weekend and hope to start on the other elements now that I have the animatic.
welcome to the challange man… nice concept but just to point it out to u… there werent no human in the era of dinosours… but if u wanna fo for fictional story then keep it up… good luck
Another dinothread,Welcome my friend.hahahaha,
I was thinking of scene with dinosaurs and man together,but in some explained could happen scenario,which is kinda fantastic,but spectacučar nevertheless.
I debated whether to do the image. It’s not a fictional scene believe it or not. It’s why I put in the explaination. It reflects something that supposedily happened in the late 50s. A group of pygmies claim to have killed something that matched the description of a sauropod dinosaur. I personally don’t believe it myself but it makes for a nice image. The conditions of the contest were a bit vague so I wasn’t sure how far they would stretch. A lot of people seem to be going down the fantasy road which I would avoid. This falls more under Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot. It’s a classic story but my personal belief is it’s fiction. Kind of like doing a Megladon which I also considered. I wanted to do something organic but the theme lended itself more to architecture or mechanical things, cars or planes. Like I said I wouldn’t have done a dragon but the story of an African Dinosaur is pretty well known so hopefully I won’t get penalized for not doing hard reality. most of the SciFi concepts I’ve seen probably fall more under fantasy than this. This is more wildly improbable than fantasy which is well within the description.
nice idea
I think there is a dinosours stronger than that
but dont worry and take your time
The sauropod model is still really early on. The shaping is maybe half done and most of the textures I just threw on for the fun of it so they’ll all be redone. Also the background was strickly for the fun of it and looks nothing like the final. I want to use custom plants with a very different look and feel but I couldn’t resist throwing in an old test render just to see how things were coming together. I want to tweak the pose as well. Big animals like elephants are tough. Just want to give it some more movement. The human characters will be the fun ones to pose. The final look and feel will be dank dark swamp. There’ll be a patch of sky above but mostly it’s dense jungle.
It’s going fast but the animatic is deceptively simple. The setting is going to be fairly elaborate so I expect to be working right up to the wire.
Thanks. I keep debating about adding a character closer to the camera. Even in a high res image the faces are mostly looking away and I need to deal with body language alone for expression. I’ll probably try a few placements and see if I can get something to work. I’m considering a character hald turned motioning to an off camera character, something along those lines at least. Fortunately a CU character won’t have to interact with the environment like the others so I have some latitude with adding and deleting the character. I need the people and dinosaur before I can really start on the setting so I’m kind of working backwards. The water needs to be modeled to interact with the characters so I want the models finished and posed before I go on. I’m doing the water in a couple of passes, one for the basic water shape then another for kind white cap foaming water. I may have to do a few more passes for things like reflections. That one is trick for a number of reasons and I may wind up doing the reflections in another software entirely.
I appreciate the feedback. I liked the direction it was going in but I’m too close to it. Also I’m seeing through the mind’s eye and I know what the final will be like. Should look dramatically different very soon.
How about a guy leaping onto the dinosours back ala Legolass in The Return of the King…?
Could be cool.
Nice concpet, good luck with it.
good idea. maybe it could be more sptacular if the head it closer to the men or the camera. 
Definately on the specularity. The textures were strictly screwing around. Not even close to final. I’m probably doing two separate specularity passes on the final. I want a stronger one so I can model the specularity then I need a strong one for wet areas on the dino. I’ll probably have to do a second pass on the pygmies for the same reason.
I was a bit nervous about the theme so I’m glad it was well recieved. Seemed like they were after something a little more grounded in the probable. Didn’t want to loose points for stretching the theme. Technically it isn’t fantasy. Possibly urban myth. I do think the pygmies killed something in the late fifties I just tend to doubt it was a sauropod. The description almost fit a baluchitherium, largest land mammal ever, better than a dinosaur but I’m not sure that would be more likely. We’re still talking 35 to 45 million years ago.
I had to stop on the people for the moment, maxed out the ram on my machine, so I’ll probably finish the Dino and the skulls first. I modeled the basic skull over the weekend so I just have to assemble the clusters and add some loose hair and vines and final coloring.
This is a semi final of one of the skull elements. I need to add clumps of hair and vines and I can’t do the final lighting for a few weeks. I’m also thinking about adding a python wrapped around the pole. The pole itself may not really show in the end and what does show is likely to change.
the skull looks good. 
but we can see that the three skulls are the same. i think you have to make a little variation, so that they don´t look simular.
They might actually change quite radically by the end. Still two and a half months to go. I planned on slugging everything as soon as possible then refining it section by section. I may erode some of them fairly heavily in the end. Also they are half covered by debris especially the lower ones. Probably shouldn’t have called them semifinal. In truth they are probably half or less done. I just want to see the the whole composition and a rough lighting set up before I decide how far to take things. I come out of visual effects and it’s an old habbit making things clean and uniform then tweaking and degrading them. It’s still early enough on to change proportions and such. Right now I’m trying to decide if I want to leave them fairly fresh looking as they are now or really aged. Probably be a bit of a mix in the end.
Thanks for comment. I’ll make sure they look very different in the end.