At ConceptArt.org, there is an activity sub-forum called Creature of the Week, or C.O.W. Each week, a topic is given, and artists have one week to develop a creature that fits that topic's spec.

For the 100th C.O.W. challenge, rather than a single concept, the organizers decided to make the challenge a bit tougher: 100 creatures in 30 days! Each participant would select 10 descriptions from a list of 30, then create 10 thumbnail-sized designs (up to 150x150) for each description.

The challenge started on October 1st, and ran until October 30th, but I found out about it on October 17th. This left just 14 days to complete all 100 creatures, or nearly 8 per day! I nearly decided to pass on the challenge, but decided that it was time to kick the "impossible" reflex to the curb. After a first day run of 7 creatures, I decided to go for it full-force.

12 very busy days later, all of the designs were complete. One more day for touch up and finalization, and the piece was done. End result: 100 creature designs in 13 days.

There ended up being 45 entries for the competition, and though mine definitely wasn't the best of the group, I'm still very happy with the results. It was a great challenge to overcome the odds and complete the piece, and this project has confirmed that creature/character design is something that I truly enjoy doing. Despite the work and hours involved, I had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the process from start to finish.

All work was done using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. The creature designs were all created at final (150x150px) resolution. This was my first completed C.O.W. entry at ConceptArt.org. Other information:

Final Entry Dimensions: 2000px by 2000px (CGPortfolio Image: 1600px by 1600px)
Best day: 17 designs (x2)
Worst day: 2 designs
Average Designs/day (12 days): 8.33
Total files: 102 (100 creature PSDs, 1 layout PSD, 1 final flat image)