thanks for the advice stararup...the problems i usually run in to when i try to do half is not making it look like 2 halves (seam problems and all...) - and i feel like modeling the whole things is more natural ('cause no 2 sides are identical)...i initially started thinking about what creature to do based on the fact that i wanted to experiment with fur...so, hopefullly this guy will have some! i did some tests with a poly smoothed cube ...painting hair direction, length, etc...cool stuff