WIP dragon lair display

So I have good news- I've gotten most of the sounds done for the kobold solo animation done, I'll post that WIP tomorrow, but I wanted to take a break to get some more stuff done on the "post-credits" scene...

I really wanted to give the dragon's lair an interesting look... so I did some prototyping on what a demonic computer would be like. I figured it would resemble something like the mammon machine from Chrono Trigger:

https://chrono.fandom.com/wiki/Mammon_Machine

I began with a design similar to it, then deviated quite a bit and thought it would look neat if it were a combination of technology, meat and bone.

I till like this look, but this is a bit too busy. Like it looks like blobs of bone, demon-y meat, metal and demon-y eyes. Then, I added some tentacle-like things for displays, but it blocked too much of the cool parts of this thing. So back to the drawing board.

I then thought "what if the t-rex skulls held the monitors in their mouth?"

It also didn't look very cool since they would always face forward and... well, t-rex skulls look cooler when they're not facing forward. This skull is also from a free, CC-BY model.

https://blendswap.com/blend/21854

It's not bad, but I remembered I modeled my own t-rex skeleton awhile ago and thought mine might be better to use

This is an extremely basic rig and each spine bone mesh is parented to it's own bone... It took me a long time to make this thing back then! So I modified it a bit and tried this:

I just didn't like this that much either. I'd rather not have to animate a bunch of these things. So, I thought maybe it's *one* skeleton t-rex, without arms, and the displays come from cables or something connected to him.

So, I'll be really honest with you, this is an extremely complicated thing with a lot of crap going on- those cables were an absolute pain to figure out how to do! And they're not perfect, but how noticeable would imperfections be anyway, considering how dark it will be?

I didn't mean to spend so much time tonight on this since it's like, not even something that most people will care much about... but it was interesting doing something like this again! A neat learning experience too, this is the first time I've rigged a character with complex cable things going on. I settled on a t-rex spine/skill, with cables running around it's bones into a weird "computer" mechanism at the skull. The center is a meat-y core, topped with another techno/metal component, with 7 flexible cables that have holographic display things at the end.

I also think that this t-rex skeleton thing will talk, it's like an AI assistant or something. The dragon would be like "Wow, she's perfect~" then, the t-rex thing will be respond with a robotic, whispery, demon-y "Yes, you're always correct and you're ass is fat..."

Also here's better look at the little magical, wavy display shader for this:

And there it is, I just was moving the main bones around- the head, displays and such can point towards and object, so I don't think animating this thing will be *too* bad. Each display will show a different video or something, the idea being he's reviewing the videos the camera imp captured~

Anyway I didn't realize what time it is- I'll post more stuff after a little bit of sleep!