Nov 14, 2009

Webbing

Like always I didn't get as much done this afternoon as I'd have liked, but at least I did get in a bit.

Sadly this cold I'm currently afflicted with has dulled my mental capacity to a point where Vertex modelling is just too demanding. I will be giving it a go though as soon as possible.

The big accomplishment of the day are the flippers which I have reconstructed as webbed toes. I have never understood why most Mosasaur restorations have the flippers as nice solid proper flippers like on Pleiosaurs and Ichthyosaurs.

The fingers of these two animals are nice and packed together clearly forming a nice flipper. Mosasaur fingers are not nicely packed together, and curve away from each other slightly. This strikes me as much more in common with lots of other aquatic creatures with splaided digits. The gaps aren't filled with solid tissue. They have skin stretch across and for webbing.


I am also playing with the beginning of the colour scheme. There is a lot of work that will be going into the texture of this guy, as again I want him to look like a Monitor Lizard in patterning. However with the colour I wanted a more ocean colour scheme. Hence the blue. Does it look semi believable at this stage? Keeping in mind it is an undercoat.

1 comment:

davidmaas said...

the front fin seems disproportionately large... more like platecarpus than tylosaurus when I look at these: http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Mosasaurs/1mosasa.jpg.

Like the finger approach, but lizards in general (and the above skeletons also imply this for mosasaurs) have variance in the toe size and position where they leave the foot. http://www.foxnews.com/images/328071/0_61_mossaurus1.jpg shows also a very prominent first finger, which is not reflected in other skeletal reconstructions... hmmmm.