Cave Bat

I was looking to fill out my portfolio; there weren't many animals in my 3D work. And I thought an interesting animal to try would be a bat; they're pretty weird looking!

I don't own a bat, so I had to search around for some pictures. I mixed and matched a lot of features I found most interesting. I focused a lot on the Townsend Big-eared Bat and the Egyptian Cave Bat, and exaggerated features of both.

The Townsend Big-eared Bat's eponymous ears were pretty wild-looking, so those went in! I also pulled a lot of the colors from this guy too; the dark blues and maroons were more interesting than other bat's grays and tans.

But I ditched the arms and body for something more shapely; this guy looks like a cotton ball with sticks for limbs.

The Egyptian Cave Bat was interesting because it had some very human-looking musculature, so I took that and went a tad farther to create a pretty buff bat.

This species was also part of Tim Flach's book More Than Human, which features pages and pages of his awesome animal photography. I had it on hand and it was a great reference. You can see some of his work at http://timflach.com/work/more-than-human/

I used ZBrush for this guy... man, that program is cool!