Thank you for your replies Teyon.

My range of animals is wide, from insects to fish, mamals to birds and not forgeting the reptile along the way. I have over twenty years of experience regarding drawing animals in the real world using colored pencils and/or pastels but I have found that trying to expand my spectrum to the virtual world of 3d is probably the hardest challenge yet.

The style of modeling is at this moment more a case of experimenting really though I tend to favour a cross between box and edge modeling and then possiblly adding extra detail using a program I have recently found called "Sculptris" (it's nearest my pocket will ever get me to using Zbrush). The programs I use for modeling are essentially Hexagon, Blender (still in the junior stages with this one LOL) and then texturing with carrara7pro.

Thank you for the links and I will check them out as a tutorial for any program can offer ideas and hints regarding the best way for me to go also, thanks for the book ideas and I actually have the first one by "Eliot Goldfinger" but I will check out second one.

Also I would be very grateful should you decide to create some tutorials based around animals and time is no problem with me as I have all the time the world.

Ian...