11x14" sketch
I must say, I feel that I should be working with James Cameron on his new Avatar movie. I am more of a Fantasy illustrator than that of a Creature designer, but I do enjoy combining a good four creatures together once in awhile to polish up my imagination/anatomy skills. This one was inspired by a prehistoric sloth. My Academy had a book sale, where I purchased two books references of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures at a very very cheap price. There was a depiction of a sloth's upper body and I completely changed everything from the reference.If one wanted to make sense of this being, it is a sloth-mole-gorilla- T-rex that is very strong but somewhat lazy. This creature is nocturnal and mostly blind, but can see in ultra-viloet light that it generates from those circular scales depicted on its back, neck, and underbelly. I figure because its mostly blind it needed more of a firm gasp of its surroundings along with its need for a certain frequency of light. Therefore, the front T-rex-like arms have fingers much like a frog's, that are very sensitive to vibrations. And because it has gorilla like upper and lower body strength and movement, this thing can charge if needed. But I figure that it is mostly a gentle creature. Just don't get it mad, or you get the claws!