The first assignment for Lars Grant-West's Creature Lab class at RISD was to design a creature from the future. I came up with a horned, gliding descendant of the manatee: the sirenopter, or "tree cow". At first, I explored a more mudskipper-like angle. I then made it more similar to arboreal mammals like sloths and spider monkeys, but with a beetle-like horn and a seal-like fighting style. The final touch was to give it the ability to glide from tree to tree like a colugo!
The graphic design was based on that of Zoobooks, a huge source of inspiration for me and a lot of animal artists of my generation.
