This corner of the web will probably go back to musings about work and such; probably (but not definitely, at least not yet) something more directly related to my portfolio site’s purpose.

“I rather like this dragon. It could almost be a cartoon version of my personal dragon, with the simplified spots and similar head fins.”

I do like this dragon. He’s got a not-quite-Muppety feel to him. I could see him smoking a cigar. I think he is adorable, and want to Do Something with him, though I am not sure what.

I’m not entirely sure that I succeeded.

The one on the top right seems more birdlike than anything else. Proceeding down from there, the one on the topmost left looks more like an alien than anything else.

The spiky one beneath that is reptillian enough, but doesn’t quite scream “dragon” at me, the long-snouted creature under that one seems more like a gharial than a dragon. The large-horned head was me kind of grasping at straws and doesn’t really count. The toothy face is interesting, but again, isn’t dragony enough for me. The drooling head is too similar to my Mold Dragon to be considered new, though the one at the bottom (which was actually the one I did first) seems to sit well with me.

I think that this is better, but if I had been thinking in the first place yesterday, I would have done the joints differently so that they could be concievably moved by the wind-up key in its side. Maybe that’s for firebreath.

One of the vaguely frustrating things about this as a design exercise is the fact that it requires me to replicate “happy accidents,” things that I didn’t mean to do or just happened over the course of working that turned out way better than expected (the shading in the eyes in yesterday’s rendition of the Temporal Wurm were a result of construction lines for the eyeball that I kept because they looked like a highlight, for example).

Ah well. At least the runes are looking a little better… I think.

While I was drawing it, I realized that I am not very good at coming up with Strange Runes; many of the shapes and curlicues I used to make the markings between the nodules on the dragon’s flanks look too similar, which I suppose could be the point if it’s all the same language. I do like the concept of the dragon’s offensive bits, the claws and tail spikes, only existing when the dragon desires them to exist; I may revisit this again, but it seems to be pretty much done.

This was fine, but I’d already drawn a rock dragon (or at least a significant portion of one) two weeks or so before, and it only had one head:

I tried to tell the voice that, but, in the way of head-voices, it would not listen. So I complied, and did this:

The right head reminds me very strongly of the art style lurking around at The Oatmeal, but this wasn’t intentional. That notwithstanding, I’m not sure if I like this; It seems to lose a lot of the sinuous grace that the previous iteration had. I guess that’s what I get for listening to that little voice. Live and learn.