HOW DO I MAKE REALISTIC HORNS FOR MY CREATURES ON AN IPAD?

If you're doing creature and character designs, at some stage you're going to be asked to create horns.

- Glen Southern

It's not just dragons that need them; you might need to design a Viking helmet, aliens, real-world animals from a narwhal to a bull, and of course there's always those pesky unicorns!

Even if you're a 2D concept artist, it helps if you can make the complex shapes in 3D for use as references in your work. It can be difficult to get perspective correct on creatures with complex horns, so being able to build them correctly, angle the models for your required point of view and then use that as reference is great. It even helps establish the correct lighting in your scene, as you can add and position lights in a way that you can then paint accurately.

There are so many ways to create horns for the plethora of creatures you may need to tackle. You can use basic polygonal modelling and build up the shape with accurate geometry from the start. That can be time-consuming but the end result is always pleasing, especially if you’re going to use subdivision modelling techniques to round off the shape.