Depth is any visual cue that tells your brain something is in front of another. Stereopsis is the one that "3D" movies use, but a much more important cue is simply occlusion (i.e. one object partly obscures another, therefore it is in front of it), and other things like light, shadows, and other tonal quality give you "depth" which is what you can use textures and other 2D for. Maybe that's not what anyone was talking about, but learning and using "2D" is I think very important for understanding 3D and art in general.

Originally Posted by stwert

Your not going to understand it if you don't learn how to do it. Same thing applies to 3D. 2D and 3D go hand in hand. You really cant do one without the other in my honest opinion. Even the amazing folks who sculpt in Z-Brush or Mudbox with no reference have more than likely spent time doing 2D at some point.

Originally Posted by THX1138

I recommend that you forget about the color for right now, and focus on the anatomy instead. There are features on your Alien fish that don't translate very well because of the dark color scheme.

Do another concept with just line art only. Do it with pencil and paper and scan it, or take a cell phone pic or something, then post it here.

Originally Posted by THX1138