Brazilian Three-Banded Armadillo

This is the brazilian three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus). This species and the southern three-banded armadillo are the only species of armadillos capable of rolling into a complete ball to defend themselves.
Armadillos are special animals and the only mammal that wear this kind of protective shell consisting of boney scales and keratin.

I choose this animal as a personal project because I was interested in how I can sculpt and texture their distinctive shell.
In the end I sculpted eveything by hand withouth the use of alphas or VDMs (except for very high frequency skin detail) to achieve a very organic look with unique scales. For the slight layering effect of the scales I processed the displacmentmap in substance designer and reapplied it on top in zbrush. C&C are welcome :)