Arctocyon
by Daniel Eskridge
Title
Arctocyon
Artist
Daniel Eskridge
Medium
Digital Art - Digital 3d Rendering/cgi
Description
The latest in my paleoart series is the Arctocyon. Its name means "bear dog" though neither bears nor dogs are that closely related to it. Don't confuse it with Amphicyon which is much more closely related to dogs and bears and is also called a bear-dog (though it's name actually mean 'ambiguous dog').
Arctocyon was about the side of a medium to large dog. It lived during the Paleocene and early Eocene in North America. It was likely an omnivore. Being plantigrade with short legs, it was likely an ambush predator, perhaps one of the first larger mammal predators to fill the niche left by the mass-extintion that wiped out so many dinosaurs.
I gave him a mane mostly because I thought it made him look a little cooler, there is no evidence to suggest they had manes. The back leg closest to the viewer is on the ball of his foot because his weight is shifted forward. In a neutral stance, his heel would be on the ground.
The usual disclaimer about my paleoart: When it comes to paleoart, the images I create favor 'art' more than 'paleo'. While I try my best to depict animals as accurately as possible, I'm make no claim that they 100% scientifically accurate. The same goes for the environment I depict them in. I am primarily interested in creating aesthetically pleasing images. Scientific accuracy comes second.
I sculpted the arctocyon in Sculptris. I then transferred it to ZBrush where I textured it, posed it, and added the mane. Next I transferred it to Vue where I built the rest of the scene. Final rendering was done in Vue 9 and took about 36 hours on an Intel I5 2.8 GHz with 8 GB of RAM. Post production was done in GIMP.
Uploaded
April 3rd, 2012
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