One of my favorites, also one of the more beautifully abstract creatures. I think this was the same kid that a generation earlier started the whole 'turtle' trend in that group, which persisted for another 8 generations after that one!
@Sparr I dunno, pick me a random one, I might just make it when I have some free time @minorthreat For rendering, you should disable mip-maps and texture filtering in texture properties, see screenshot. Also, turn off ambient occlusion, as it seems to influence textures too.
Very nice! I still need to complete the tree with the newer 400 or so creatures so you guys can pull from that too.
There are also these creatures I got from the Richmond Public Library when I left some paper and crayons there for a month for people to doodle with. Some interesting stuff in here that hasn't been utilized in anything yet.
I've been aiming for speed. I did this and the texture in under two hours. It seems like an incredibly long time for most people but this is, like, my fourth creature I've ever done so it's an improvement in my eyes. XD
Looks good! Two hours sounds fine to me; that's about how long all of my creatures took, but I'm no expert either. Is that his mouth on the bottom there? haha, and what are those things on his head?
Yeah that's his mouth. The things on the side of his head are little gill like structures for taking in air since I imagined his mouth would be suctioned to the ground a lot of the time.
DID YOU KNOW?!!
Insects breathe that way through spiracles, and maggots, for instance, have them on their butt so they can burrow their mouth and body deep into something without suffocating!
That's awesome! I love evolution and xenobiology. I've actually drawn an entire ecosystem comprising of hundreds of creatures for a game I plan to make someday, so this is good practice.
I felt like changing the original colors on this one.
You know, I kind of like how aside from exploring ideas of evolution of matter/organisms, this also explores the evolution of art and the relations between the different media of art. In a way, your project can trace the history of visual art from cave painting-like kids doodles to animation, 3d graphics and beyond. It really works on many different levels.
Ha, thanks! Yeah, the actual process of getting the drawings is more interesting in itself than the animation, as the kids begin to take the game personally and exhibit 'real' evolutionary behavior, or go through various mini-phases of human society and the human condition in the course of a few minutes, which is pretty crazy to witness. We also get the drawings by making 80 or so copies of 5 or so originals, so the constant artistic shaping also has an 'evolution of art' feel to it. As we go on the drawings tend to get more complicated as well, where at first its just a creature, and eventually they start adding background, motivations for their creature, and writing things in the margin to try and plead their case for why their creature is better and deserves to live. It's also why I was trying to get various artists to take their own spin in a medium not restricted to crayon, because it 'evolves' the creatures further, as in your case where you altered the colors and removed the fur, changed the mouth hairs, etc. You can see all my and others 'extra' artworks on the derivative art on my blog here http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com/category/derivative-art/
A few months ago along with my plant evolutions I had them do some predator/prey interactions, and my predator was in a distinct 'stalking pose,' which I had never done before, with all of the other animals being fairly neutral. Because it was slightly more awkward to draw, the kids struggled a bit more, but what came out of it really reminded me of ancient hieroglyphs and carvings of animals hunting in these distinct artistic styles that obviously change through time and through each culture, but the pose is rarely broken etc. I'll put some of them up here eventually as well.
Oh, and would you mind giving me your real name Saigo so I can credit you on my website?
Hey, that's really interesting. Another interesting aspect of it is to explore different art styles through drawing various creatures, to see what works and what doesn't, to draw different versions or try and translate them from one medium to another as you did and evolve style and technique. So, again, very interesting. Pick me another one, maybe something from the same branch. Maybe I'll try to go in some different direction than the previous two and the first one.
Oh, and my name is Bogdan Gontar.
One thing I noticed is that, if l ask people to choose a creature, that 9 times out of 10 they choose from the upper right. Those were the creatures from my initial test group of college aged people, so naturally their creatures are a little more 'designed' and perhaps more 'interesting' to people than the others. I don't really feel that way, of course, and when, for instance, I was making skeletons for a variety of the creatures, I found the more abstracted designs to be more fun because I had to look at it and wonder what they hell was going on!
well i decided to model the blue guy I wanted last morning. I dont like the texture much but I might redo or work on it again. Tho it game out pretty well.
Also anyway I could get a higher res version of the center purple branch of the tree. I want to do some of the simple yet colorful creatures there.
Not exactly sure what branch you mean, with the center being all 5 branches very close to each other. Here's the whole purple generation anyway.
Oh, I also made another alternate evolution animation that I had never shown you guys. It swaps out the creatures from the top left part of the tree for the bottom right, and instead of ending with the ice age, it ends 'underground.'
I've been aiming for speed. I did this and the texture in under two hours. It seems like an incredibly long time for most people but this is, like, my fourth creature I've ever done so it's an improvement in my eyes. XD
I always loved this little guy, and when you reminded me of him I started a little artwork that I just now got around to finishing. I also just realized why you called it BRUGO (that was the filename shorthand from imgur, haha)
Thanks for posting me on the blog, I'm honored! XD The cave animation was an awesome alternative to the original. I'm wondering, is the second video like a different timeline, or is it a different evolutionary branch working on the same timeline as the ice age?
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll do all of these (or maybe I will!), but can I get larger versions of these plants? I really need to practice modelling plants, uv mapping, and especially texturing.
I think it's cool how you're able to motivate the kids to change their thought processes. It seems like when the drawings appear to be very similar to the original, you start a new tree with one of the more different drawings, and there's suddenly an explosion of creativity.
Also about that thing I mentioned; the drawings of the ecosystem, I had actually intended to post them until I realized I don't have a photocopier. I do, however have a camera with dead batteries, so I'm going to try and remember to get new batteries for the sake of documentation!
The cave animation can be thought of as 'both'. Its a sort of alternative history, in that every group starts out exactly the same and stays the same(until the final 2 generations), but it also follows the same generational epochs, so you could also think of all the creatures inhabiting the same planet at the same time, just in different parts of the world/biomes. It shows how even though the hundreds upon hundreds of creatures look different from each other, every single one of them comes from a single common ancestor.
The first plant I saved onto my computer was named "ctenoimbricata_spinosa_by_ntamura-d54ari1", but after going back to check, it was renamed to "9jFB8". Do the other plants have scientific names?
I don't really know what you mean, but the file you described is this
maybe you got your files confused or something? I dunno, but none of the plants/animals have scientific names, although I have named some of the animals simple things in my skeleton sometimes so I can remember and keep track of them (fathead, lumphead, squatbody, etc)
XD Yeah that's really weird, I know exactly what happened. I downloaded both of those images, but deleted them because I had copies in another folder. By clicking on the file and deleting it, I had set the name of the plant image to save it as. That's weird, sorry for the confusion XD
EDIT: Hey I just took some pictures of some of my ecosystem drawings, should I post them here or do you want me to pm them to you?
I didn't want to consume the entire page with drawings so here's a link to a slideshow. It's not all of my drawings, and unfortunately I've only actually drawn on paper a fraction of what's in my head. Most of this stuff is inspired from weird dreams. You should be able to right click and "view" the images to be able to read the words and see closer detail, but photobucket has a shitty resolution. Believe it or not, the first creature I encountered in a dream is the thing on the bottom right side of the third to last page.
ZION
For some reason, to view it up close, you have to right-click on the left side of the image or else it'll open up the next picture.
Zion is a gas planet comprising of an atmosphere bearing a striking resemblance in composition to earth.
The landmass is an array of floating islands; I'd love to say it's due to certain elements reacting with the strong magnetic field surrounding the planet, but I really don't have any knowledge of physics or geology. XD
I think my biggest inspiration for the actual geology of the planet was playing Half Life 1 as a kid, and always wondering what Xen would be like if it actually supported an ecosystem, and I guess that idea flourished into something of its own.
The ecosystems I have imagined are incredibly dense and biodiverse, and the weather is very humid.
Interestingly enough, despite a complete lack of lakes or oceans, water is abundant on Zion.
The planet itself rotates on an axis running almost parallel with the poles, meaning the north pole is too hot for life (aside from micro-organisms), the south pole is in perpetual cold and darkness, and the equator, where most of the life lies, is always in twilight.
The days and nights are hard to determine, but the sun appears to "bounce" on the horizon as the planet wobbles on its axis, so during the peak of a day the sun will be slightly higher in the sky.
The game will actually be even more interesting then the planet alone. I've planned several characters who get thrown into this alien environment. They try and work together to survive and explore, but sanity deteriorates easily as stress has its tole on the characters, from both external and internal forces. I have much of the story planned out, including a mind blowing sequel that will take place 500 years later.
If you have any questions about any of it feel free to ask. I'm actually using this evolution thread as practice so I can model and texture my own creatures. XD
Replies
One of my favorites, also one of the more beautifully abstract creatures. I think this was the same kid that a generation earlier started the whole 'turtle' trend in that group, which persisted for another 8 generations after that one!
@minorthreat For rendering, you should disable mip-maps and texture filtering in texture properties, see screenshot. Also, turn off ambient occlusion, as it seems to influence textures too.
This guy was also part of my skeleton project, http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/skeletons-40/
There are also these creatures I got from the Richmond Public Library when I left some paper and crayons there for a month for people to doodle with. Some interesting stuff in here that hasn't been utilized in anything yet.
Insects breathe that way through spiracles, and maggots, for instance, have them on their butt so they can burrow their mouth and body deep into something without suffocating!
Here you go!
opps sorry wrong image link -.-
this is my first polycount post! I am prolly going to do a bunch of these guys I see a few others i like.
I felt like changing the original colors on this one.
You know, I kind of like how aside from exploring ideas of evolution of matter/organisms, this also explores the evolution of art and the relations between the different media of art. In a way, your project can trace the history of visual art from cave painting-like kids doodles to animation, 3d graphics and beyond. It really works on many different levels.
A few months ago along with my plant evolutions I had them do some predator/prey interactions, and my predator was in a distinct 'stalking pose,' which I had never done before, with all of the other animals being fairly neutral. Because it was slightly more awkward to draw, the kids struggled a bit more, but what came out of it really reminded me of ancient hieroglyphs and carvings of animals hunting in these distinct artistic styles that obviously change through time and through each culture, but the pose is rarely broken etc. I'll put some of them up here eventually as well.
Oh, and would you mind giving me your real name Saigo so I can credit you on my website?
Oh, and my name is Bogdan Gontar.
Try to give this one a shot, Saigo.
I made a skeleton for it here. http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/skeletons-9/
Also anyway I could get a higher res version of the center purple branch of the tree. I want to do some of the simple yet colorful creatures there.
Oh, I also made another alternate evolution animation that I had never shown you guys. It swaps out the creatures from the top left part of the tree for the bottom right, and instead of ending with the ice age, it ends 'underground.'
[ame="
I always loved this little guy, and when you reminded me of him I started a little artwork that I just now got around to finishing. I also just realized why you called it BRUGO (that was the filename shorthand from imgur, haha)
Upper Left
yellow turquoise color
This guy
Here you go
Made a thing based off a skeleton I drew, based off an original drawing by a kid! You can see the chain here.
http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/3-d-turtlebones/
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll do all of these (or maybe I will!), but can I get larger versions of these plants? I really need to practice modelling plants, uv mapping, and especially texturing.
I think it's cool how you're able to motivate the kids to change their thought processes. It seems like when the drawings appear to be very similar to the original, you start a new tree with one of the more different drawings, and there's suddenly an explosion of creativity.
Also about that thing I mentioned; the drawings of the ecosystem, I had actually intended to post them until I realized I don't have a photocopier.
Here are your plants!
http://imgur.com/a/XXrSs
And get a scanner!
maybe you got your files confused or something? I dunno, but none of the plants/animals have scientific names, although I have named some of the animals simple things in my skeleton sometimes so I can remember and keep track of them (fathead, lumphead, squatbody, etc)
Nobu Tamura did make this creature drawing for me, though, so maybe thats where you're getting mixed up somehow?
http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/derivative-art-5/
EDIT:
Hey I just took some pictures of some of my ecosystem drawings, should I post them here or do you want me to pm them to you?
ZION
For some reason, to view it up close, you have to right-click on the left side of the image or else it'll open up the next picture.
Zion is a gas planet comprising of an atmosphere bearing a striking resemblance in composition to earth.
The landmass is an array of floating islands; I'd love to say it's due to certain elements reacting with the strong magnetic field surrounding the planet, but I really don't have any knowledge of physics or geology. XD
I think my biggest inspiration for the actual geology of the planet was playing Half Life 1 as a kid, and always wondering what Xen would be like if it actually supported an ecosystem, and I guess that idea flourished into something of its own.
The ecosystems I have imagined are incredibly dense and biodiverse, and the weather is very humid.
Interestingly enough, despite a complete lack of lakes or oceans, water is abundant on Zion.
The planet itself rotates on an axis running almost parallel with the poles, meaning the north pole is too hot for life (aside from micro-organisms), the south pole is in perpetual cold and darkness, and the equator, where most of the life lies, is always in twilight.
The days and nights are hard to determine, but the sun appears to "bounce" on the horizon as the planet wobbles on its axis, so during the peak of a day the sun will be slightly higher in the sky.
The game will actually be even more interesting then the planet alone. I've planned several characters who get thrown into this alien environment. They try and work together to survive and explore, but sanity deteriorates easily as stress has its tole on the characters, from both external and internal forces. I have much of the story planned out, including a mind blowing sequel that will take place 500 years later.
If you have any questions about any of it feel free to ask. I'm actually using this evolution thread as practice so I can model and texture my own creatures. XD