This is the image I have used for the background. I am addicted to mountain biking, pic taken by my friend with sony R1 during one of our rides. I loved the foggy after rain atmosphere, so I removed myself and made space for Dinosaur.

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Took some photos containing fern out of my personal library ( I am addicted to photography as well). Later in process, I have “rotoscoped” ferns, so they fit nicely into final comp.

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After exporting 5 different matCap material renders of Dinosaur to Photoshop, I started arranging blending effects throughout these five aligned images, until achieving desired look for further work.

To get the acceptable final output I just played with the blending modes. I don’t have any specific rules that I follow. You just play with it, changing them through layers and blending modes until you get what you want. So, tomorrow if I want to make another dinosaur, I guess I am going to use completely different pattern in blending order.

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After having base done, I am duplicating this layer from which I paint spots and stripes on the animal to make it look more natural. I avoided the clean look because I wanted to make it look somewhat discreet, but at the same time vibrant.. Also, have learned from my pet, bearded dragon that some reptiles tend to change colors depending on how they feel (happy/angry) or the outside factor like health, humidity or cold. So, the fun factor was to imagine this dinosaur having number of color outfits.

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This is the pow render, to clear how model looks from different angles.

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For the final pose I have tilted the model slightly upwards, because that angle looked better then the plain one.

After removing myself out of the equation, the background was ready for adding the elements I’ve started with dinosaur, then two layers of fern reason I did two layers is, because later, I added layer of shadows and second layer of painted evaporations and fog.

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So, now I sorted some things, it was time to immerse Carnotaurus into the woods. It meant, I need to find a way on how to make this dinosaur appear as if he really in that woods.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] First, I took the background, duplicated it and then in blending mode chosen color burn mode. It made the forest much more… something.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] That opened place for ever welcoming flare effect of sun rays cutting through woods and Carnotaurs head. I used gradient tool and after I just applied motion blur filter on it.

Somewhere along the way, I decided to flip the entire piece horizontally. In this point, things like fog, shadows and more blending in of the dinosaur were ahead.

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Here I added some fog to fern’s along with shadow. If you notice that dinosaur is now lighted properly. This is achieved again through blending modes. I duplicated dinosaur and turned in screen mode for the upper layer and then deleted with brush all logical places where I supposed that light shouldn’t be at.

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Painting teeth’s and eye was easiest part.

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Final moves were adding the feel of wet-skin and painting evaporations. The wet skin was done again by duplicating, major dinosaur layer and then subtle deleting of some parts and leaving some parts behind. Evaporation is paint job, took some time to get it properly done.

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Hope you like this all work and learn something from my procedure. Thanks.

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