Steampunk Cat Demon - An experiment

An experimental image with a bit of history as it was sat in a sketch book for a while. Always knew I'd do something with this Sphynx like scribbly exaggerated drawing (based on our cat) as it had an interesting anthropomorphic feel to it. I'd been working on and off the finished image for a while and a version of this character also came into play when working on the Times Dreams & Nightmares series, as a sphynx like demon for the second article. I decided to take it a little further, changing mainly the eyes. No real planning to the changes, just leaving progress to fate when rendering the finished image to see what would happen. Hoping for inspiration from the divine accident!

I'm playing with a new approach with a heavier bias towards working in Photoshop. To date I've always preferred the directness of Adobe Illustrator, but recently I've been exploring PS a little more inquisitively. Screen shots were taken to gauge and monitor progress (yes I was struggling!) when rendering, just as I did when working on the Tosca image for the RT. Where that image came together beautifully, this Steampunk Demon proved a little more troublesome, going through three colour-ways before I was totally happy. By the time the image was fully resolved I had about 40 screen shots totted up. As I'd maximised the viewable image for each screen grab they all lined up quite well. Thought they could make an interesting sequence showing all of the key stages of the render when animated into a slide show. Assembled in Adobe Flash after a steep learning curve. My first time using the software and I actually found it quite intuitive after the initial head scratching. Hope you enjoy it.