Monday, January 11, 2010

Nature's Headgear

When I see a nature show and they feature gazelle, impala or ibex, I always appreciate the artistry in the sculpting hands of evolution/god/spaghetti monsters. It's unavoidable though that my thoughts should always wander to "damn, that's some frickin' awesome headgear". Some of them are just equipped with the most exquisite racks of lovely curving horns, the likes of which demons only dream of.

So since making my Christmas antlers got me in the mood to make horns, my days of fruitless envy are done and gone, for I made myself some frickin' awesome headgear :D

The ibex is a type of wild mountain goat, who, as you might have guessed, has awesome horns. The ridges and character and roughness of them is simply inspiring. For these, I did a whole new set of textures (but with the same familiar options as the others) to reflect the unique character of them. I also used oblong sculpts to try to cram as much of the actual shape of the ridges as I could. Thankfully, they were quite versatile and allowed me to honor a few other gloriously ridgey horned animals.

The Capra Sibirica (Siberian Ibex) is another goat with amazing horns, so huge you really have to wonder how they don't fall over when they stand up. These are actually smaller than their horns, you can certainly make them larger if you like but I didn't want to give my avatar a headache.

Aepyceros Melampus is the scientific name of the impala (not the car). These are my favorite, they have a beautiful lyrate curve that's flattering and exotic, and are possibly more aerodynamic for superior highway fuel performance.

At first glance you might not be able to tell the difference between these and the Aepyceros, but if you try the demos you'll see they both have a distinctive character. The Gazella are a bit more aggressive and streamlined, which might reflect well on their namesake. Not sure if gazelles are aggressive, no one ever comes back from safari saying they got attacked by one. Though admittedly that might be because no one wants to come back from a safari and say that out of all of the dangerous animals they saw, they got attacked by a gazelle.

Anyway, these are all out at the main store :) You can nab them for 125L each, and you can grab the demos out of the notices for Masqueraderie or at the store.

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