H. McGill

@hannahcomb.bsky.social

2398 Followers 242 Following

Indie Gamedev Artist Webcomics: Amphiox, RAWR! Dinosaur Friends They/she hello@hmcgill.art http://hmcgill.art Do NOT use my art to train AI

Painterly, cel-shaded digital art of a bearded dragon lizard scuffling around under some wildflowers, caught at the most photogenic moment possible. It lifts its head and stares at the viewer from on top of its isometric chunk of dirt. The yellow daisy flowers cloak much of the dragon's body with their leaves, turning their faces askance in equally photogenic ways. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Painterly, cel-shaded digital art of a dragonfruit, or pitaya, tree planted into an isometric 'chunk' of earth. The tree is made of long, thick, waxy cactus pads with no spines, its trunk also cloaked with pads growing out of the earth. The dragonfruits are hot pink with leafy green bits at their top end. This tree simply cannot keep up with how many fruits it's producing so some are already falling off onto the ground and off the chunk of earth. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Painterly, cel-shaded digital art of a basilisk, or 'Jesus lizard', skedaddling across an isometric chunk of clear, clean lake water. A basilisk is green with blue polka dots, two large ear fins on the head, two sail fins on the back and tail, with a yellow belly, gangly limbs, and brown stripes down the tip of its tail. True to its name, it can straight up run across the surface of open water using its giant muppety feet. I wish I could do that. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Painterly, cel-shaded art of a long, lithe leafy seadragon. This fish has a seahorse's orange body with white stripes along its sides. It has a very long, extended tail and all of its fins are thin like branches with large, multicolored frongs trailing behind it in the current. The seadragon is nestled within some of its favorite camouflage, seaweed, which is rooted into an isometric 'chunk' of brightly cerulean shore water. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Painterly, cel-shaded digital art of a komodo dragon sprawled across an isometric chunk of dirt and molded tree trunk prop from a zoo enclosure. The whole piece is done in understated beige tones with teal shadows, hiding the big lizard with its own basking light. Maybe this isn't such a great situation, being unable to see the giant carnivorous beast as well as you'd like, but sometimes art calls us to do dangerous things. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Painterly, cel-shaded digital artwork of a medieval-style dragon protecting an isometric chunk of battleground. The dragon is two-legged with a long neck, golden wings, and a variety of swords collected in its teeth, blade-first. Its head is red like flames with a doglike snout. The dragon's tail playfully ends upwards in a golden, leafy fleur in the style of illuminated flowers. A shield rests across one of its wings towards an unseen foe, stopping a thrown axe in its tracks. Littering the battlefield are the dragon's past victories: Daggers, swords, blood splatters, and a sad little skull under one leg, including vertebrae dissolving into the dirt. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Repeating, short gif of a large wooden triptych door lifting, wavering, then slamming open. Inside, there is a painting of a very stupid-looking calico cat and a demon accomplice. The cat is clearly royalty, evidenced by her fancy crown and a velvet pillow. The artwork is drawn in a cel-shaded cartoony style influenced by 14th century-ish European medieval marginalia. Rest in peace, Althea, you were a great kitty and I know you'll get along with Titivillus, patron demon of typos.
Cover to the webcomic, Amphiox. It's a black cover with criss-crossing blue serpent coils taking up most of the background. The coils writhe around each other with faint glimmers of scales highlighted, before vanishing into darkness. This is a teaser for the beast that will be encountered and explained within the webcomic. Layered over the writing coils of the Amphiox is its tail, oddly centered and still compared to the rest of its body. An amphiox's tail ends in a fin with rounded tips. The fin's color is a bright, bioluminescent gradient composed of yellow fading into bright skyblue, before tapering into a darker cerulean. The tail has vibrating red highlights. It casts a rainbow of highlights onto its own scales. Attached to this tail are two more, lesser pectoral and dorsal fins, in cerulean blue. The pectoral fin pokes out near the tail, and the dorsal fin is further up, and larger. White text overlaid on top: AMPHIOX H. McGIll http://hmcgill.art
Cute preview teaser graphic of the game, featuring the titular Tittivillus's face front and center on a green hand-painted field. The demon peers out of a golden frame with scalloped edges. The demon's face is blue, with a batty nose, curled haircut, pointy ears, and blue horns. The demon's wings are somewhat present in the image, but mostly cropped.
Repeating simple gif of a cel-shaded cartoon horseshoe crab. The crab is blue-shelled with red accents along the brow and other shell ridges. Its legs are red too, but its little claws and feets are blue. It's bouncing in place and wiggling its tail, clearly ready to hug somebody.
Cel-shaded 2D animation of a seagull flock soaring along coastal winds over a vast blue ocean, with the focus on one seagull in front. This seagull gets startled by sudden turbulence and barrel-rolls off the screen. The focus of the animation then shifts to a mysterious volcanic island that pulls into frame. This island is unlike any landform seen by human eyes, with pristine white beaches, and rolling, forested foothills leading up to sharp mountains made of blue volcanic rock. The volcano is clearly the tallest mountain there and appears to be serenely smiling (via pareidolia-inflected shadows) over its domain.
Cel-shaded, painterly, digital art of a volcano, drawn from the foot of the volcano looking upwards into a crisp blue sky full of leftover smoke from an eruption. The clouds encircle the volcano's peak like a halo.
Short, repeating animated gif of a cartoon dodo stomping a thylacine. It takes place in two scenes. Scene 1 depicts the animals on the rim of a volcano with lava lapping at the rocks. The dodo jumps from one rock onto the thylacine's territory with a stomp. The thylacine launches off over the lava pool. Scene 2 cuts to a distant mountain skyline where the thylacine flies off into the sky, Team Rocket style.
Digital cel-shaded art of a white unicorn fleeing an unseen hunter in the woods. The unicorn leaps across an isometric chunk of land vegetated with plants drawn in the style of a medieval illuminated manuscript -- stylized grass and unknown plants, twisting painterly tree trunks, and broad paisley leaves. An arrow with red fletching stabs a tree behind the unicorn, just missing its mark. Below the unicorn, a small hedgehog mom has just rolled in some fresh grapes and is bringing them on her spines to her children in a burrow underground. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Dark, cel-shaded illustration with outlines of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton draped across volcanic rock on a black background. The bones of the dinosaur are as blue as the rocks, and it seems to have taken its nap in the bowels of the earth. The skeleton faces right with its limbs akimbo, like it just fell down there, exhasuted, and turned to bones. An ominous red light glows within the T. rex's skull, hinting that it might not be entirely dormant. Watermark on ribcage: http://hmcgill.art
Digital, cel-shaded artwork of the snake-necked turtle in the quoted post. The pose of the turtle has ben very closely studied: It floats mid-swim, long neck extended to maximum length, looking upwards at something to our left. Its skin and shell are gunmetal green, with a seafoam belly and thin light rim around its shell. Its feet are webbed and also armed with giant claws. This artistic rendition of hte turtle places it weaving through verdant, aquatic grasses set in a mossy-green isometric chunk of environment. Generic aquatic plants, also brightly green, wave in the background currents. Watermark in white text: http://hmcgill.art
Looping gif of a painterly/cel-shaded mountain island during a storm, with tossing trees in the foreground. Lightning flashes once, then twice, coming closer each time.
Digital cel-shaded art of a gyrfalcon perched on a pile of sticks, stylized as an isometic square 'chunk' for the purposes of the illustration. The gyrfalcon has a white body with speckled feathers, and light beige wings with large brown chevrons running down them. The bird is fluffing up its wings impressively, throwing all its feathers into a chaotic array.
Digital cel-shaded art of a Carabus auronitens, a beetle with a rainbow sheen. It's stepping off of an isometric chunk of rotting wood, complete with gross little hairy bits and maybe its own droppings (unclear, I was referencing from a wikipedia photo as well and the bug is surrounded by wet brown dustbunnies of some kind). The beetle itself is mostly a very dark gunmetal teal, which shifts in the light from dark green, to lime green, to limey yellow, to sunburst orange, to molten magenta. It has red accents on the tips of its legs and big red mandibles, too. The beetle is about to politely step off of the wood chunk because it thinks this whole thing is too silly for it to participate. Watermark: http://hmcgil.art
Digital cel-shaded art of a little round Tasmanian Devil showing off all of its teeth... And I mean every last gleaming tooth in that stinker's head. It's sitting and yawning on an isometric chunk of earth, among bits of grass, weeds, sticks, and stones. Its fur is glossy and black, it has a patch of white over its heart, and its ears are translucently pink and coverd with hair. It also has long whiskers coming from its snout. Watermark on the art: http://hmcgill.art
Digital artwork of a woolly mammoth with a luxurious coat and soulful lashes. She is leaping in victory while some kind of (unseen) volcanic surface lights her glossy fur from underneath. The image has no background. It's just the mammoth because that's all you really need to see here, really.
Screenshot of a ...bush. Yes. It's a cel-shaded bush made out of ginkgo leaves that happens to have something fluffy (give or take the size of a woolly mammoth) inside. Hmm. No pachyderms here!
Repeating idle animation of a little greenish-gray horseshoe crab, drawn in a cel-shaded cartoony style and animated with tweens in Spine. The crab is wiggling, all claws out, waving its spiky tail in the air. It's on a plain black background so you can appreciate the sheer crab-itude.
Screenshot of a cel-shaded, hand-drawn video game asset that is a grayish-green horseshoe crab on blue rock. The crab is clearly truckin' somewhere, maybe to horse town.
Four brightly-colored prehistoric animals rendered with starkly underlit ectoplasmic flesh, arranged floating on a black background. They all have blank white eyes but are smiling to indicate they are friendly. From left to right, top to bottom, they are a blue dunkleosteus, a red tyrannosaurus, a green quetzalcoatlus, and a purple brachiosaurus.
Repeating gif of a purple cartoon dodo bird repeatedly going dark and blossoming with fire. The dodo bird is either being roasted alive, or having a moment where it metamorphoses into its ultimate evil form (which looks exactly like its normal dodo form).
A silly cel-shaded digital art of a calico kitty's face, up close. It's drawn from the perspective of a person trying to sleep but then the kitty shows up and steps on their chest in search of a humble, home-made snack. She has big green eyes and sort of business-like attitude, the same vibe a kid has when they ask if you got games on your phone.
A two-page spread of a digital cel-shaded comic about a thirsty crow on an ancient Greek desert island. The hooded crow (gray with black wings, head, and tail) soars through a blisteringly dry sky, under the heat of a white sun. The crow spots a lekythos, or ancient Greek pottery that can stand upright and has a handle and a spout on top. The lekythos is handsomely painted with red clay, black paint, and white paint in geometric stripes. The crow alights on the top spout of the vessel in order to peer inside. A bright blue avian eye lights up: This lekythos is full of liquid! However, the lekythos's spout is too tall for a crow's beak to reach all the way down to the drink. Desperate, the crow first spots the skeleton of someone else who died of thirst, but notices a solution nestled in the bones. Bit by bit, the crow picks up a pebble at a time, depositing it into the lekythos. It takes all day, beyond the sun setting over the ocean, but finally the crow gets a precious sip. It appears that perhaps the liquid is a bit alcoholic...or maybe crows just like to sing as they flop uselessly in the earth after a day of hard work.
Digital, cel-shaded artwork with a painterly flair. Crop of an idyllic tropical island vista during sunset, brutally interrupted by a thylacine pouncing from nowhere. All we see of said thylacine is their face in an extreme closeup, jaws open, teeth out. It seems to be smiling but might just want to bite us. It also has a single paw raised, showing off some pretty pink toe beans.
Digital cel-shaded art: Character portrait of an undead mammoth who has risen from a fiery grave in order to enact revenge on their killer. The mammoth's flesh is made of magma, while its skeleton is made from blue volcanic rock. It has fire for hair and flames lick up its trunk. Its eye stares soullessly from a halo of flame. The tusks are also molten red-hot, like freshly fired metalwork.
Digital painterly art of a vast, luminous and cloud sunset touching down on a glassy ocean. Rays of yellow light shift from orange to purple as they become more distant from the sun. The scene is framed by distant island mountains with pastel beaches. Ash clouds cut out a section of the foreground, collecting around a lava pool and a winner's podium made out of blue volcanic rock. The losers will be depicted as remaining in the volcano, while the winner gets to dash off into the sunset.
Screenshot of a volcanic brachiosaurus god popping out of a lava pool to rain destruction down on foolish players. The brachiosaurus has flesh made of magma and all of its bones, hardened by geologic forces, are visible within its body. It has purple fire lighting up its eye and red-hot teeth. The god arches its neck and roars. An eruption frames the god: A bright column of lava spouting into the sky, and a billowing storm of ash in the background.
Long, panorama-style crop of painterly digital artwork depicting green island slopes full of acai palm trees. The viewer is situated right underneath the nearest-most tree so that they can look up through its fronds. The sky is clear and blue, indicating a clear day -- but not if the distant volcano has anything to say about it. A plume of ashen clouds rises from the mountain's peak.
The game's title screen, including a luxuriously embellished 'Tittivillus Teaches Typning' done in the style of the Book of Kells. It has a few modern customizations in the face of Tittivillus, an abbot's face, a pirate worm, a snailcat, a skull, a horse with a cross around its neck, a big viking ship with a dragon's head, a fat king cat, a bird with a flower on its head, and three rabbits with jobs in sattelite architecture, writing, and sewing. These medieval miniature additions have personal private meanings that will not be shared here. The title screen has a distressed monk at the table in the foreground, which is the player character in-game. Regrettably, as of typing, this game does not have any purposeful built-in accessibility functions for low-vision or blind users. The general consensus on the play experience is that it's a really nice typing game but the demon (and the accompanying main gameplay conceit of typos coming back to haunt you) can go jump in a lake.
This is a one-page digital comic with three panels. The first panel is of the author/illustrator in a gray hoodie covered with silver stars. They hold a pencil aloft. It sparks with colorful little stylized stars and swirls meant to symbolize either creativity or antagonism, maybe both. Narration: Writing is like... Panel 2: "Hello!" bursts out in 3D yellow letters. "Let me put vivid hallucinations directly into your brain!" These words meander through a psychedelic landscape of pink, blue, green, and yellow chaos, featuring an old-timey Saturn drawing; stars; a green bacterium with flagellum waving behind it; a Boeing jetting out of this scene before it gets stabbed by the author's pencil; a half-seal, half-pelican creature named Norman wearing a dapper hat and cane; a peeled banana; cheese; and a bucket full of pink slime. The panel ends with a very, very sharp pencil poised to poke into someone's ear. Panel 3: The author, in real life, demands that their partner, Devin, "Experience an emotion!" while threatening their ear with the pencil. Devin cowers over the manuscript. "I feel it! I feel it. wagh," he says. He's sweating bullets.
A one-page digital comic that takes place in a grocery store. The artist depicts herself and her partner standing in front of the checkout line, manned by what is clearly a bear who is wearing a mask. Narrator: On not recognizing someone because they are wearing a mask... Bear cashier: Oh! Blueberries. They're my favorite. The bear cashier panics slightly. Bear cashier: But I like raspberries too. Bear cashier: (thinking) Have I offended the raspberry?! Bear cashier: Oh no. Maybe I just like all of the berries! The artist and her partner walk away from the cashier with all their paid groceries. Artist: W...was the cashier... hairier than normal?
DIgital pixel art of a thylacine resting on its haunches with its mouth gaping open. It is cel-shaded with some dithering to soften some of its shadows. It has one paw held aloft as though to paw at the air. It has a pink tongue and its mouth is lined with needle-sharp teeth. Its stripy tail curves into an S shape behind it.
Digital comic depicting a bicycle outing by H. and their spouse, Devin. The top graphic is an embellished ‘Biscuit Mountain’ in an arc over a man climbing a mountain of American (not British) biscuits. Panel 1 depicts H. and Devin riding their bikes under an overpass on a road lush with trees and roadside buildings. Devin: I’m not going to get the Biscuit Mountain again. Panel 2 depicts H. and Devin taking off their helmets. Devin: It is an unreasonable amount of biscuits. Panel three has H. and Devin in a restaurant. H.: What’ll you get instead? Devin: Eh… Panel 4 shows the menu. The first entry is one biscuit on a plate, labeled ‘A reasonable amount of biscuits.’ The second entry is a pile of biscuits. It’s labeled ‘Biscuit mountain.’ Panel 5 has the waiter attempting to take Devin’s order. Waiter: Hi! Can I take your ord— Devin (interrupting): Biscuit Mountain!
Cover graphic for the tiny but fierce indie typing game, Tittivillus Teaches Typning. It has a lockup in medieval-looking letters on a gold label, hovering over a plush green background. The titular Tittivillus demon pokes up from somewhere offscreen, just his blue batlike horned face visible from the nose up (and a little bit of his friendly smile). His wings spread out behind him and are mostly cropped by the graphic's constraints. Regrettably, as of typing, this game does not have any purposeful built-in accessibility functions for low-vision or blind users. The general consensus on the play experience is that it's a really nice typing game but the demon (and the accompanying main gameplay conceit of typos coming back to haunt you) can go jump in a lake.
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a big fluffy white yutyrannus, a tyrannosaur known for being covered in feather-like stuff. This one was rendered like a polar bear, with off-white proto-feathers and black skin for absorbing as much of the sun’s heat as possible. The dinosaur is hunkered down with three of its tiny offspring, each sporting their own puffy winter coat, on an isometric chunk of snow. Two of the tyrannosaurus siblings proclaim their dominance on top of the dinosaur, while the third snuggles up under the parent’s teeny two-fingered wing. The yutyrannus perches on its own tail, using the feathers as insulation for its big clawed feet. Sunlight drapes along the dinosaur’s back. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a purple trilobite trucking across an isometric chunk of sea mud. Trilobites are generally shaped like giant roly polies, with segmented bodies and heads shaped like crescent moons. Its eyes are multifaceted and protrude from the sides of its face. As a member of the Kolihapeltis species, this trilobite is particularly blessed with spikes in its shell. It has four long spikes coming out of the back of its head, one spite originating from each ‘eyebrow’ bump, and two additional spikes jutting from where the base of the head meets the body. It has spikes generously lining the sides of its body like it’s half sawblade or something. It has numerous armored, segmented legs that end in sharp points…you could say those are spikes, too. Its tail is also… Wait. The tail is not spiky at all. It’s round and fin-like, or maybe it’s a shell, as it was hard to tell from the fossil. Either way, this animal is 90% no-touchy. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a longisquama, a little lizard with big showy skin frills on its back. I have drawn this to the best of my understanding, which is that the frills are vaguely feather-shaped, fanning out like a peacock’s tail except vertically, down the lizard’s spine. The frills are not feathers, though; they are made of colorful skin. The lizard’s body is yellow with brown skink striping, and the frills are a riot of blues, reds, yellows, and browns. Longisquama is posed aggressively inflating its spiky dewlap on an isometric chunk of tree, tail ready to whip anyone who dares deny its majesty. After all, the smaller you are, the meaner you gotta be to survive the Triassic (which it did not survive, at all, that we know of). Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a Tully Monster, which is a hagfish-adjacent pink wiggly worm fish from the Carboniferous. It has a long, ribbed body with soft pink flesh, encased by protective slime that imbues it with a purple hue. It has a tear-shaped fleshy tail, primitive ‘pore’-shaped openings lining its sides for gills, zero limbs, and a head that is probably going to take a hot minute to describe well so hang on a second because I might as well write my will and testament at the same time. Okay. Here we go. Its eyes are shaped like a preschooler’s craft project, with each orbit glued onto either end of a narrow stick, and the stick has been awkwardly glued onto the creature’s head, right on top, no care for aesthetics. It has a long, stiff trunk. There is a raised hole in the trunk’s base on the front of the head that could be a misinterpretation of other reconstructions on my part, because I have no idea why there would be a hole there. The trunk itself looks very unbending cartilaginous to me on most reconstructions, with a stiff ‘elbow’ in the middle to bend it. For this composition I chose to make the trunk even bendier. The trunk has a fun surprise in the shape of a beaky mouth full of too many lamprey teeth. So what is this tully monster even doing here? It is suspended inside of a pond over an isometric chunk of pondscum-covered dirt and rocks. Tiny pinecones have fallen into this pond, as well as some twigs and stray pine needles. The tully monster hoists a spare pine tree branch over its head, with no idea what to do with it, because during the Carboniferous trees were literally just stacking up with nothing to break them down and return them to whatever cosmic hole the Tully Monster slithered out of. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of an archaeopteryx in a moment of exasperation, as it swooped onto the beach only to find out that a yummy thing flashing in the waves was merely an empty scalloped shell. The archaeopteryx is a dark bird with flashes of magenta iridescence across the wings, teal shine to its tail, blue shimmering from its pinions and head, and a little gold gleam in a scruffy feather collar around its neck. The scene takes place on an isometric chunk of beach sand with the thinnest, shallowest reach of an incoming wave stroking its surface. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a plesiosaur at the end of a failed lunge to catch one of ten fish. The plesiosaurus is giant, whale-like, with its vertical tail poised upwards in the seawater, and its head brushing the sandy seafloor. Clouds of disturbed sand float around the plesiosaur’s head, long neck, and fin. This plesiosaur was drawn from the more modern idea that giant sea animals have a lot of blubber. This means its neck starts out as thick as its belly and then tapers, evenly, to the width of its narrow head. The fish being hunted are yellow, with red heads and purple rainbow fins. The whole scene takes place on an isometric chunk of seafloor, during a sunset that stains the sand and rocks violet-pink. Red corals perch on a corner of sea rock nearby. A sad little fish skeleton can be seen buried in the sand. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a chunky, creamsicle-colored triceratops plonked into an isometric square chunk of marshy grassland. The dinosaur is sitting, winsome expression directed at the viewer, with its reptilian tail poking out the back. The horizontal lower half of the triceratops is covered with bluish-black mud, some still wet and sliding down its body. A chunk of wet grass in the triceratops’s beak drips into the muddy water surrounding its feet and butt. More grass remains to be eaten around the triceratops’s hedonistic resting spot. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a yi qi caught mid-bath, inside an isometric square chunk of a rain puddle with small round pebbles at the bottom. The yi qi is super iridescent with a purple face, blue head, eggshell-blue back and wing feathers, and a fan of reflective purple tail feathers. All feathers are floofed as the dinosaur runs beads of water over its body. The interesting thing about yi qi is that it has membranous wing structures under its feathers, like bat wings, but supported with an elongated wrist bone instead of fingers. These wings of skin are matte purple instead of shiny. The dinosaur looks back at the viewer with a yellow eye, like, are you for real right now? Seriously? Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a startled corythosaurus, a duckbilled hadrosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous. The corythosaurus is beige fading to dark brown at the back, with striking horizontal stripes lining the sides of its form. It has orange cheeks, amber eyes, and yellow spots for eyebrows. It’s leaning far back with its tail about to strike. The object of the corythosaurus’s surprise is an enormous orange cockroach-looking bug, which seems to have zoomed out from underneath the nearby isometric chunk of fern-covered forest soil. The roach may make it to safety as long as it avoids a powerful swat from the dinosaur’s tail. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a giant ground sloth chowing down on avocados, straight from the avocado tree. This sloth is twelve feet tall with gorgeous locks of algae-yellow hair all over its body. Its face bears the typical sloth ‘mask’ of dark spots around the eyes and a white muzzle with a wet snuffly nose at the end. The sloth’s mouth is open, bearing two absurdly long upper fangs and equally sharp-looking lower fangs, while an entire avocado gets crushed between its molars. The tree is small compared to the sloth, and planted into an isometric square chunk of prehistoric South American earth. The ground sloth grasps the tree in both of its arms and bends its trunk over one hairy shoulder in order to nab one tricky avocado in its mouth. More plump avocados await the beast’s appetite as they dangle in the tree’s branches. Knowing how fast a sloth goes it’s probably set for a few hours, if not days, of feasting. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of an ancient Devonian apex predator fish, Dunkleosteus. It’s just a very very large fish with a very large mouth and big, scale-like bony teeth on a bony face. This one is countershaded with dark shades on top and a white belly, with freckle-dappled midtones between them. Usually this fish is portrayed as being very long and slim, but this dunkleosteus has been rendered more like a, well, for lack of a better term, short king. Very short body. Still fierce and also adorable. The fish is suspended over an isometeric square chunk of sandy seafloor. Water reflections dance over the fish’s skin, hard rocks poking out of the sand, and a discarded nautilus shell. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of an enormous orange sauropod, Amargasaurus, traipsing through a flooded isometric square chunk of swamp. The animal casually towers over nearby cypress trees. It looks over one shoulder but for its size, few things would alarm it. Pterosaurs flap away from it, diminuitive in comparison to the dinosaur. The Amargasaurus has giraffe-like hexagonal markings all over its body, mingling with spots and concentric rings along its back. Its trademark head and neck fins have been rendered as fully enclosed by flesh, rather than spiky like many reconstructions depict. The swamp water is green with algae and other yummy stuff for a big browsing herbivore to enjoy. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a blue oviraptor sitting on a dirt nest of giant, speckled blue eggs. It holds one of the eggs in its big chunky beak playfully. It’s probably a cannibal! Its head resembles a cassowary head with a bony crest on top and a short, powerful beak in front, with dark eyes and orange freckles around the orbit. This oviraptor was colored with inspiration from a Stellar’s Jay, so its front half is darker, less-saturated blue, while it brightens towards the tail. It has black stripes on its wing pinions and tail feathers, and flashes of iridescence crest its chest and wing. The drawing is part of a series of prehistoric animals sitting on isometric square ‘chunks’ of land, so this chunk shows a cross-section of the dirt nest. A pair of eggs have attempted to escape the chunk, one on each side. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a saber-toothed tiger (smilodon) parent picking up its kitten by the nape of the neck with its mouth, as cats do. The kitten appears to be a little unsure of itself, as anyone would be with a giant curved canine right near their throat. The parent has no intent to harm its baby, it's just trying to move the child from one place to another. Sabertooth tigers tend to be stockier than most modern big cats, with a bigger head. These two big cats in particular have been rendered with countershading: Light tan underbellies, and an orange coat that fades into sunset-like reds and purples. Leopard-like spots mark the cat’s shoulders but fade towards the short stubby tail and belly. The scene is posed on top of an isometric chunk of grassland at sunset, when everything takes on golden shadows. A small, windblown sagebrush bush rests at the front paw of the smilodon. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded artwork of a purple Hallucigenia worm perched on an isometric chunk of rocky blue seafloor. Yellow spots line its sides. It has a long, tubelike body that narrows at the neck, resulting in a beady-eyed face constantly in a state of surprise with its mouth open like a small letter ‘o’. It has many legs al down its long body. The first six legs are little more than tentacles that wobble around freely in the currents. The Hallucigenia has fourteen additional legs that end in feet with two tiny claws per foot. On its back are two sets of eight defensive spikes, each tipped in white. Overall the creature is gelatinous and slightly see-through, a delicate specimen. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded art of an ichthyosaur leaping, dolphin-like, out of an isometric square chunk of open, frothing ocean water. The ichthyosaur has been colored like a mashup between a sea turtle and a common dolphin, with a long white stripe along its sleek body, white countershading on the belly and under each fin, and a pop of yellow around each eye. Its eye takes heavier inspiration from sea turtles with sideways, wrinkly eyelids and broad but hydrodynamic scale patterns all over the face. In most respects this animal looks like a dolphin except for its nostrils being closer to its eyes, tail being vertically-oriented instead of the mammalian horizontal orientation, and a big toothy grin full of reptilian teeth in its beak. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded art of a gorgonopsid, inostrancevia, one of the Late Permian reptilian mammals (or perhaps mammalian reptile). This animal most closely resembles a pit bull’s musculature crossed with a monitor lizard’s splayed legs. It is colored with big brown patches on yellow, orange, and green lizard-like scales, inspired slightly by komodo dragons but more bright and saturated. It’s very freckled and speckled all over with its patches of color migrating into each other. It sits in a pose reminiscent of how dogs sit when they don’t care about being noble: Leaning to one side, legs akimbo, tongue dangling out. It parked its silly butt on an isometric chunk of sea-green limestone. The gorgonopsid has a giant head compared to dogs, proportionally, and in its mouth is the thick femur bone of a dicynodont. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded art of a leaping psittacosaurus, a bipedal precursor to triceratops. It is largely orange-brown with white countershading on its underside. The dinosaur has small stripes and spots marking the gradiation between its dark side and its light side. It’s jumping over a log and a bush set in some sun-dappled woods in the deep past. Worms inch inside of an isometric square of dirt that grounds the whole scene. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded art of a wibbly wobbly Dickinsonia, a weird wobbly lifeform from before the Cambrian era. It looks like a floppy frisbee with bilateral lines sectioning its body into many gelatinous ribs. It lives underwater surrounded by fleshy ‘plants’, including orange charnia with spots and neon green hylaecullulus. Since I’ve interpreted Dickinsonia as a transparent creature, the other life forms can be fuzzily seen through its body. This little scene is set on an isometric square chunk of sandy seafloor. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded art of a Borealopelta, an ankylosaurus most well known for being ‘mummified’ in stone. The dinosaur sits in an isometric, square chunk of sunlit meadow, surrounded by purple tulip-like flowers stretching upwards. The borealpelta is largely peach-colored with neon pink knobs lining its armored shell. It barely fits on the chunk of earth. Its long tail, which lacks the typical ‘knob’ associated with ankylosaurs, curls around the resting spot from behind. Watermark: http://hmcgill.art
Digital cel-shaded art of a rhamphorynchus, a small shore-dwelling pterosaur known for its bent beak and mouth full of sharp teeth. It has two membranous wings attached to its long pinkie finger and a narrow tail that ends in a spade shape. The pterosaur was colored with inspiration from a red-footed booby, and features a blue and magenta beak to accent its largely yellowish/grayish body. The pterosaur dips its toe into a bit of tropical ocean water, which is contained inside of a stylized ‘cube’ of the animal’s environment. Watermark on the image: http://hmcgill.art