Linhenykus Portrait

A quick portrait of a tiny dinosaur (less than 2 feet long) from late Cretaceous Inner Mongolia: Linhenykus. I made the underlying model a couple years ago, but decided to do a few tests with it while learning Blender's new curve/geometry node-based hair system. And then used shallow dof and some Photoshop tweaking to create a realistic looking final image.

The lighting and backdrop is an hdri from polyhaven, with dirt-colored planes to bounce some light back up on the animals. The background models are also by me, and then the foreground has a a fern frond from a free model by xfrog on turbosquid. Having that completely out-of-focus planet in the extreme foreground to add realism is a technique I've imitated from the extremely skilled https://www.artstation.com/joanna_kobierska