Saturday, February 7, 2009

Creature Feature # 3: M.C. Barrett


Yikes! I forgot that Saturday was my Creature Feature Day!
Anyway, the artist whose work I'd like to share with you this week is Matt Barrett, known on the internets as MC Barrett, a concept artist for Arena Net. My jaw dropped when I first saw MC Barrett's creature designs. I hope you also find them enjoyable.



One of the first things that impressed me about his creature designs is his use of rather obscure fossil animals for creature design inspiration. The awesome creature above left brings to my mind several extinct species of proboscidean (Elephant), while the creature above right is clearly inspired by members of Dinocerata, one of my favorite groups of extinct mammals. Being a paleo-geek myself, I really enjoy this.



Another thing that I find extremely admirable about MC Barrett's art is his amazing command of light and shadow. Just look at the above examples. See that beautiful cast shadow on the upper creature creature, and the great sense of illumination in the lower creature.



He's also a whiz when it comes to rendering textures. Check out these beauties above.

Here's some more examples of his creature designs.




Some relevant links:
MC Barrett's blog: http://mattpostsarthere.blogspot.com/
Index of artwork: http://www.moonkatz.org/mbarrettart/?M=D
Various guild wars threads from ConceptArt.org, containing artwork by MC Barrett as well as many other very awesome artists: link 1, link 2, link 3

All images in this post (c) M.C. Barrett.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's the only artist you've featured so far that I like. Is he on Deviantart?

Moai said...

I'm sad you don't like the other guys, but glad that you like this one.
He's not on DeviantArt, as far as I know. He doesn't seem to be a very prolific web poster.

dananddna said...

Wow, I can't believe I've never seen this artist's work before. Very impressive creature design. His spaceship/vehicle designs are also quite amazing too.

Moai said...

Yes, he has strong abilities in several areas besides creature design. He does kickass environments, for example.

BUOW said...

I'm very sorry to corrupt the artistic purity of your blog, but I have no other way of contacting you due to the untimely death of my cell phone: Would it be agreeable for you to be abducted from the transit mall at 12:00? Sorry again.

Moai said...

A 12:00 abduction at the transit mall would be most satisfactory. I'll be over near the office/Chinese food place, minding my own business and generally being easy pickings for a kidnapping.
I hope your phone enjoyed its brief time on this Earth.

Unknown said...

Damn ! I already seen this creatures, but I didn't know there is a site and an artist behind those.
Good job, really !