Creature/character design studies - Terryl Whitlatch.

Before I begin, here is a sketch of a baby honey dragon.

Terryl Whitlatch is perhaps one of the more well-known creature designers and has worked on films such as the recent "Alice in Wonderland" and "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace". Her works have the distinction of looking incredibly believable as they are based around real animal anatomy.

I recently received a book by Terryl Whitlatch, "The Principles of Creature Design". I've already had "The Science of Creature Design" for some time now and have done a lot of drawings from said book over the last few days to try and drum animal anatomy (particularly tetrapod anatomy) into my head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have also been watching a lot of animal documentaries and taking notes. Recently I've realised that just copying a lot of animal anatomy studies wasn't going to help me learn it properly as the workflow is repetitive and my brain tunes it out after a while, the same with human anatomy studies. There is also the issue that Terryl herself covers, that you need to keep your ideas spontaneous and fresh.

 I decided not to do studies from "The Principles of Creature Design" in that case, but instead just read through it and look closely at the creatures she had created. What I find interesting is how similar her approach to creature design is to mine. She usually thinks of the personality first and then builds the creature around it while taking in mind the environment it lives in. She explains how the "why" of the creature is important and how it affects its environment and the story it is in. She also goes on to say that it is important not to get too formulaic and stick to the formulas of "what makes a character look cool/popular" as this has stagnated the creativity of other creature designers. She also uses the example of how the traditional "Disney style" has become somewhat formulaic and good want to find what is new and fresh.

This is reassuring to me since it means I don't need to learn any "magic formulas" when it comes to character creation, rather I just have to create them with common sense. I will still continue to see how other people design their creatures and characters, but I won't try to regiment the design process too much by trying to figure out what appeals to people. I am also going to design creatures in a more spontaneous way rather than going on these study marathons so that the information is more likely to sink in. Hopefully this will mean more finished pieces and less sketches.

Misc. studies and book haul.

This blog post is going to be fairly mixed since I have done a lot of work for Negotiated skills in different areas of the module.

To begin with, I have done further anatomy studies. This time, I used stock images from MostlyGuyStock's gallery and drew a large number of poses.

http://mostlyguystock.deviantart.com/

 

 

 

 

Then I moved on to throwing down a few ideas in my sketchbook. I read a few mythology books this weekend and wanted to draw more creature designs, though I quickly ran out of steam. Below is a bluecap (from mythology), a cloverkin, lunarphrax and solarphrax (original ideas) and the character Wendy Brigatte from my story. 

 

 

 

One thing I have also been doing recently is master studies of other artist's work. The first one I did was "The Beast" by Arron Blaise. Aaron Blaise is one of my favourite character designers and I have watched a great deal of his tutorials on character design and digital painting. He has a great command of colour and lighting in particular and manages to do photobashing in a subtle and effective way which I have tried myself a few times. He is also sparing with saturated colours, though manages to get realistic and life-like depth in his drawings. I will probably be studying this person in more depth at a later date. I hope to achieve this level of near-photorealism in my book.

https://cdn.creatureartteacher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/aaron-blaise-beast.jpg



 

The next master study is from an artist named DestinyBlue. Again, their command of colour is at an expert level and they even use colours that most people would consider unconventional like neon blues. TO them, the human body is an artform in itself and she uses it well to express themes like mental illness, depression and abuse.

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Imprint-416909600



 

Next I studied the famous "Girl with a Pearl Earing" painting by Johannes Vermeer. With it being an older painting, I wanted to see how the human form was portrayed before the modern age. It is interesting to see how much depth and detail the painting manages to capture and the composition is simple yet striking.

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/image-paintings/girl_with_a_pearl_earring.jpg



 

Red-IzaK is one of my favourite artists on DeviantArt for similar reasons as to why I like the other aforementioned artists. However, they tend to draw a lot of highly imaginative griffin and dragon designs as well as being able to add intense colour and depth. I noticed that their feathers manage to somehow be soft yet sharp.

http://red-izak.deviantart.com/art/Izora-441409944



 

Afterwards I tried again at improving one of my old pieces (similar to how I did with the Darcey piece). I have taken a number of skin-painting tutorials from YouTube artists such as Istebrak. The characters below are from the book and Mumbeltrousse is a honey dragon and therefore a species I'd like to include. I have learnt an efficient way to achieve sub-surface scattering with photoshop's colour dodge blending mode. 

 



Here is a comparison between the new work and the old work.



And then I did a painting of a robin with a rainbow breast. This utilises more subdued colours, though demonstrates how to use rainbow colours with subtlety.

That concludes the section on my art studies thus far. While I have been producing this work, I have also had further ideas relating to my book and I have also received more literature that I can use for this module.

I now have the following books to study from;

• Fantastic beasts and where to find them.
• A natural history of dragons.
• Evolution.
• The ressurectionist.
• ZBrush creature design.
• Arthur Spiderwick's field guide.
• The natural history book.

I plan on ordering a handful more books fairly soon, including "Animals: Real and imagined". I can use these books to help me understand how to structure my own book.

Arthur Spiderwick's field guide has a total of 31 species covered in the book and it is a fairly small book all things considered. I am thinking that it would be best not to focus on all the creatures in the Gretchen Goosander universe but rather a small number of them. So far I have considered doing the books in 'volumes', the first being the volume covering Phraxai, dragons and pseudodragons. In total, I have thought of about 12 of these creatures so far. I have also considered how the creatures will be described in the book;

"As a bird is to a dinosaur, a phraxai is to a dragon. Birds may be the descendants of dinosaurs, but they are not dinosaurs, as Phraxai are not dragons. However, people still refer to Phraxai as dragons for convenience's sake as they are winged, fire breathing (or more spewing) monsters. What differentiates Phraxai from dragons is that they are faster, smarter and generally more advanced, plus they tend to have feathers and fur instead of scales. Phraxai is a word used similarly to deer and sheep in that it is both singular and plural. Any of these creatures will have 'phrax' as a suffix to their name."

"A pseudo-dragon is also not a dragon, nor a phraxai. They deviate far too much from the criteria for a dragon and a phraxai, but are still closely related to both."

I am also taking into consideration how magic works. I will probably keep it very simple but give it a firm, strong basis so that this doesn't rupture the story further down the line. I don't want to bog people down in the world building just in case it destroys the wild, wacky and spontaneous nature of the book.