Carcharocles megalodon (Prehistoric Bayside)
Perhaps the most recognisable of all of Prehistoric Bayside's inhabitants, the Meg (Carcharocles/Otodus megalodon) was the largest shark to ever swim the world's oceans. This artwork was one of curator Ben Francischelli's highest priorities for the 'Prehistoric Bayside' exhibit and it recieved the most revisions, time and effort of all of the four paintings I made. We specifically wanted a meg that looked "gnarly, beat up and scary" particularly as this was to be printed *life-sized* on a 6-8m long section of wall at Bayside Gallery and be the exhibits 'Instagram spot'. You can get some idea of how ridiculously large this ended up being from last picture in this post!
Whilst there's things I'd change now, this artwork was such an incredible learning experience and I absolutely love the final result. Zev Landes, who also worked on this exhibition was instrumental in giving this shark depth, scale and mass and I'm hugely grateful to him and Ben for the guidance.
Final design, with Jean Luc Picard for scale. The cookie cutter shark bite from previous iterations was removed...as too many people thought it had been shot with an anti-materiel rifle
Basic shape, following the Sternes et al. 2024 'long megalodon' hypothesis
Scaling it to the approximate size of the wall
Version one, using the Outer Wilds player character as a scale to the confusion of many
Solid colours, lacking lighting
First lighting pass
Second lighting pass after advice from Zev Landes
Fixing the teeth, by adding yet more of them as it turns out there were too few in the jaw
Third lighting pass before finalising the artwork.
Artist consumed by his art (photograph courtesy of Astrid O'Connor)