Sam Santala - Concept Artist | Illustrator

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you all know that my work is going to be featured inside Spectrum 24 ! If you're unsure what Spectrum is, it's a yearly collection of art created by the best concept artists, illustrators and painters in the industry, with this year being their 24th edition. Being featured in publications like this is the kind of thing I've been dreaming of since I first started painting, and I'm genuinely so humbled to have my work selected to go alongside the truly fantastic artists that go into Spectrum. This feels like some of the most encouraging news I've had in a long time and it's totally made my day. And I hope you all take a look at some of the fine work the other artists who've been selected produce, I would argue they are objectively amazing. Spectrum 24 Entries Love, -Sam

ConceptArt.org's forums often hold a Creature of the Week contest. Many of my older posts from a few years ago were typically revolved around these contests and I can certainly see how much I've developed from my posts back in 2012... It's been a couple years since I last entered though, and with the latest contest sounding as fun as it did I couldn't resist trying to see what I came up with. Final Design This weeks topic was to redesign the Elder Dragon 'Bahamut' from the Final Fantasy series. Bahamut is typically shown as an almost anthropomorphized dragon, with an upright body and large wings. However, I wanted to try spending this time designing a more feral creature. I started by trying to draw some very strange dragon shapes, adjusting proportions and wing spans. I had an image of a lumbering creature with huge wings and small arms originally. Eventually I settled on the more typical draconian design, trying to keep the wings the main focus...