Sand Hound

For my fantasy art class we had to pick 6 characteristics that an animal would have and make up a creature. The characteristics included 1 movement, 2 offensive, and 3 defensive traits. I ended up picking "climbing" for movement, "acid" and "speed" for offense, and "secretion", "camouflage" and "web" as my defense. I sat down and started to think.

It was really hard to get started on this project by any means. It was like all my creativity was drained out of me, I didn't understand. Once I got into this project next thing I knew it was 17 hours later and I have literally created a creature based off those six attributes from scratch. I went into thinking about how it behaves and after looking at different reference of other animals (snakes, big cats, gorillas, bears) different characteristics started to come about. I started molding this creature into real life going as far as differences between opposite sexes, how they are pack hunters and family oriented to how their skeletal system is built and what possible organs they might have as well as informational boxes explaining some of the animal's characteristics.

I present to you a Sand Hound:



Now, the next part of this project is to take your creature and pit it in a fight to the death with another classmates creature of your choosing. This part sounds like a lot of fun! But again, I am having issues starting it. the layout and positioning of the animals is giving me the most trouble. I need a shot that is more dynamic than what I have been drawing so I haven't settled on a composition just yet. Hopefully, like this creature layout, it will all just come to me and I will have a new piece by the end of the week.

The creature I decided to pit my Sand Hound against was my classmates, Anna Zotta, Mountain Creeper. They are similar in size, anatomy and their native terrains can co-exist. Here is what her Mountain Creeper looks like:

*Mountain Creeper(c) is copyrighted by Anna Zotta

Look for the fight to begin soon!

-Ben