Silhouette Monster

Mike Yamada - from The Skillful Huntsman

Now that you've pushed yourselves by churning out a bunch of silhouettes and hopefully got out of your familiar shapes a bit, it's time to pick one to take further. Try to choose a silhouette that is very distinctive and maybe a little out of your comfort zone. Start making up the details for your creature, similar to what you did with your troll. Collect both animal and human reference for help on gesture, anatomy and texture.

• Choose a genre (adult scifi video game, children's fantasy animation, horror film etc)
• Choose an environment (jungle, deep sea, outer space, desert etc)
•  Choose a culture (tribal, hive-mind, society, caste system, western or eastern influenced etc.)
•  Choose a time period (primitive, middle ages style, steampunk, future etc)
•  Choose a level of intelligence and personality. 
• Make up a short history that helps support its culture. 
•  Share sketches of any animals/human/clothing reference you may need to flesh out the details.
• Name your creature!

Arrange your creature and any sketches/studies you want to share in  800 x 1000px documents (landscape orientation) 72 dpi.

 Push yourself: Create three "Accessories" that your creature might be found with. Either tools, weapons, clothing/jewely, vehicles etc.
Push yourself MORE: Design either another creature from the world you have created or a home/environment.

   Due Monday  July 31st

New Assignment: Silhouette Overload!

While we all get around to sharing feedback about your Trolls, here's the next assignment:

Christopher Burdett

Johan Steen

Sean Bigham

In all concept art, churning out a bunch of ideas in a short amount of time is a key skill. And in creature design, this means being able to develop a large variety of very unique shapes without a second thought. One of the easiest techniques to get there is the humble silhouette. It takes a lot of sketching to get out of your familiar shapes and really start exploring, so let's get back to basics here by stretching our silhouette muscles and our imaginations

Assignment:

1 week 100 silhoettes (or more!)  Deadline August 1st.

Medium: This is probably easiest done either digital with a fairly big brush,  thick markers or brush with ink/ dark watercolor. Allow yourself to get some big abstract shapes- you don't want to get wrapped up in detail! You should be able to get these done in a few hours.

If you are having trouble getting started/making your silhouettes different enough, think of some interesting keywords to help some shapes emerge. For example: Sinuous, Solid, venomous, fluttery, lethal, deep sea, dominating etc.

 Arrange  in  800 x 1000px documents (landscape orientation) 72 dpi.

The Spectacled Eider

Quick sketches of the Spectacled Eider, Enjoy.

Jacob Hurd-Burnell Spectacled Eider

Spectacled Eider

Very little is known about the Spectacled Eider because it wasn't discovered until the 1990's Because they live in the most remote and extreme sub-arctic environment on earth.

-IS CURRENTLY ON THE ENDANGERED ANIMALS LIST

-The Spectacled Eider (Somateria fischeri) is a large sea duck, which breeds on the coasts of Alaska and northeastern Siberia.

-The lined nest is built on tundra close to the sea, and 5-9 eggs are laid. This species dives for crustaceans and molluscs.

-It winters in often enormous flocks at sea in the Arctic along the edge of the pack ice.

The Spectacled Eider is slightly smaller than the Common Eider at 52-57cm.

-The male is unmistakable with its black body, white back, and yellow-green head with the large circular white eye patches which give the species its name.

-The drake's call is a weak crooning, and the female's a harsh croak.

-The female is a rich brown bird, but can still be readily distinguished from all ducks except other eider species on size and structure.

-Immature birds and eclipse adult drakes are similar to the female.

-Migrating birds

-Dive to the sea floor for food

-The Spectacled Eider evolved differently but is very similar to the common Eider

Eating Habits:

Spectacled eiders often feed like dabbling ducks, immersing their heads in the water and tipping up to forage. They feed primarily on mollusks and crustaceans in shallow waters and may forage on pelagic or free-floating amphipods that are concentrated along the sea-water/pack-ice interface. On coastal breeding grounds, they feed on freshwater mollusks, small crustaceans, insect larvae, grasses, berries and seeds. They utilize inland ponds and coastal shallows during brood rearing to feed on crane flies and caddis fly larvae.

-Male and Female look different and make different calls, Presumably for mating reasons. Another possible reason could be because the female camouflages with the arctic tundra grasses to stay with the eggs and stay hidden from predators such as the arctic fox.

Because there was so little information some of what I have I had to make up from observation.

Introduction and First Assignment

Welcome to your Creature Design workshop!

Murder Sticks!
Image from The Oatmeal

Your goal: To sharpen your ability to create believable imaginary creatures as used in concept art with research, reference and storytelling exercises.

I will give one exercise in May and then two assignments a month through July. Each assignment will include several components and the option of doing a “push yourself” portion. (sort of like extra credit) I encourage you to post WIPs for each other to critique throughout. I will chime in occasionally during the process and a little more when you post finals but other than that it will mostly be up to you to support and push each-other.  If you wish to continue through August, you will have the option of creating assignments for each other and I will still participate.

This workshop is limited supervision and will only be as successful as you make it. I encourage you to practice the initiative and self-discipline necessary to your success after college.

If you would like to state any personal goals you have for this workshop- I encourage you to do so. It will help me tailor assignments to your needs.

Assignment 1: Natural History
 Due May 31st

Good creature design is informed by your knowledge of the real world and the questions you can answer from observing it. Let’s start off by expanding that knowledge a bit.

Find an unusual creature (can include insects) that you don’t know much about and do some heavy research on it. Write a report that answers some basic questions:

• Where does it live?
• How does that affect how it has evolved and looks?
• How does it feed?
• How does it procreate?
• What are the differences between the male and female?
• What might be its evolutionary ancestors- what other creatures is it related to now?
• Does it have any symbiotic relationships with other animals or plants. (such as how bees pollinate flowers or oxpeckers eat bugs off elephants)
• How do they usually die?
• What are their predators and how have they evolved to escape them?
• Share anything else you discover that may be of interest

Draw your creature from as many angles as you possibly can. Draw the male, female and baby versions If you can find a skeletal structure to draw- do that as well. Try to find videos and do gesture drawings of it without pausing if you can.  Add at least two color versions exploring color, texture, patterns and any changes in these that may occur depending on their environment/age/gender etc. Arrange these studies in  800 x 1000px documents (landscape orientation) 72 dpi. (use however many layouts seem necessary)

*Push Yourself: Illustrate the creature in its natural environment.

Here's some inspiration:

Why the Mantis Shrimp is my new favorite animal

Underwater Astonishments with David Gallo Ted Talk

Nick Baker discusses the Mimic Octopus more in depth:

Image from The Oatmeal