Sam Santala - Concept Artist | Illustrator

I decided it had been a while since I created a ' Monster Hunter ' creature, and an accompanying armour set. And with Monster Hunter: Worlds recent release and success, I figured now would be a good time to begin work on a creature design I had had in my head for a while. (For this blog post I will be focusing entirely on the Donkestra creature design. If you'd like to see how the armour was made you can find the joint blog post here: Donkestra Armour Blog ) So before we begin, let's start at the end. Here is the final design: The Donkestra is a gliding reptile with heavy influences from mammals and birds. It uses skin flaps to glide across the land, whilst its spines and reinforced skull help defend it from predators and hunt down prey. Its hooked tail allows it to both hang upside down as it rests, and to quickly adjust its course mid-flight But originally I had not inteded the creature to work in this manner at all. I had begun work on this thinking...

During this weeks lesson I spent my time studying birds and their ancient ancestors, Theropods. I had taken a while to really try and understand how the anatomy of birds can be traced back down the evolutionary tree and so did detailed studies of examples of both, making notes as I went. As you can see I studied bones, muscles, posture, and wingspans. It definitely revealed a lot about how theropods transitioned into the birds we see today. Here's a closer look at some of my notes: Unfortunately I couldn't find the species of the deceased bird I was referencing In the image for the theropod you'll notice how I've highlighted the pelvis of the creature. This is because this is what defines a theropod as it is 'lizard-hipped., This is to create a stronger support for it's leg muscles. As opposed to 'bird-hipped' dinosaurs such as the triceratops, who have closer hips to allow for more digestive tracks to break down the large amounts of  ve...