Cognitive & Intellectual Skills

3. Critically analyse their own work and compare this to relevant research and current professional practice. 

Below are my development sheets for the brief "Imaginary Creature Design" created for this module.

Below is a piece created by Terryl Whitlatch, a freelance concept artist, of the anatomy of a bear from the skeleton, through to the muscles and then with the fur added. 

When comparing my own development sheets to this artwork done by Terryl Whitlatch, I noticed that although the final drawing that I did was a different way round to my earlier drawings, that they all were in the same pose like she did with her bear. I'm glad that I did that as it makes it easier to compare all three stages of skeleton, muscle and fur. I like how she outlined the skeleton drawing so that you can see how the structure of the body will look and work when it is completed. If I could go back and do it again, this is the change that I would make to my own drawing. 

Terryl Whitlatch's knowledge of animal anatomy is excellent which makes this and her other artwork or creatures so believable and life like. Especially the skeleton and muscle drawings, they look scientifically and anatomically correct. Whereas my own version look very amateur, so again if I got another chance to do this project, I would definitely spend a lot more time on the research and practice drawing skeletons to make my own drawings seem more realistic and easier to understand.

I feel overall I have done a good job, and by looking at someone else's work I can see where I have gone wrong but also what I have done similar which makes me feel confident about my work being successful and that I stuck to the brief.  

4. Synthesise observation, existing and acquired knowledge in the production of original imagery. 

For the "Imaginary Creature" brief I decided to create an animal that was about the size of a small/medium dog. I wanted it to be able to fit into a household setting and not be too large. However I didn't want it to look like it was an ordinary house pet.

For my references to create my creature, I looked at the images shown below. 

I looked at the bodies of cats, big and small. I looked at a lot of different animal skulls and decided to go a bit prehistoric and choose a skull that has big teeth like the sabre-toothed tiger. I liked the thought of my creature being made from two different animals, like they had been stuck together in the middle. I decided the main body of the creature would be built like a large cat, however the back (the legs) would be that of a bird. 

This is the finished result.

As you can see it has the prehistoric cat face and a cat like body with bird back legs. I decided that even the back legs would have fur, similar to like how baby penguins and other birds are covered in fur when they are very young. I thought that since this animal is small it could get away with that kind of look and feel to it.