Final Design - Savanna Ape

Savanna Ape

Genre: General Fantasy

Habitat: Savanna/plains

Culture: Feral Beast

Time Period: Future


This creature would be more of a background character than anything. I see it as an environmental element, just a run-of-the-mill inhabitant of a savanna setting. Not a main character in any story he would be a part in, and any interaction would be minor. Perhaps a smaller foe for a protagonist, before facing the larger predators in the area.

It is an evolved creature that lives on earth in the future. It would co-exist with animals that live today, or at least their more evolved forms.

Many animals today share traits with others that far outside their species, Like moths that look like hummingbirds, or mammals with large duck-like bills (Talking about the hummingbird moth and platypus here!). So I took the same route with this guy. He is a primate, but shares a lot of features with cheetahs. He has the long limbs, large ribcage and lungs, and flexible spine made for long strides and amazing speed. It also has spots to aide in camouflage.

I hope you guys enjoy!

~Emily

Emily's Super Silhouette Extravaganza!

...or something I don't know...

I had a lot of fun with some of these silhouettes, I started drawing, and my mind was working too fast for my hands! I started with a ton of sporadic ideas, drawing whatever weird creature came to mind. As my initial excitement faded, I went back on some of the original ideas and explored them further. It took constant reminding not to get caught up in detail, and to work quickly. Basic shapes, basic shapes! 

I've gotta say though, drawing 100 different creatures without having follow through and finish them was a lot of fun, and pretty refreshing (guess I'm not good with commitment…) I will most definitely be saving these ideas, I'd like to expand on a few of these sometime in the future.

But for now I think I've found one idea I'd love to work on for this project. There was one I was tempted to do, but it was something I've done a lot of...*sigh* maybe some other time.. It was hard to decide, and ended up going with a pretty unique one to me.

So far this is what I have, an omnivorous ape-like creature. The silhouette was really unique I thought, and those long limbs could be useful for a lot of things. In this case, running and climbing. So I've been working on designing a running monkey. I can imagine him living in a savannah-type environment, where he would take shelter in the trees and eat the leaves, and occasionally wander down to pick the bugs off carcasses on the ground (gross). The trees are pretty sparce, so I can imagine him having to book it from tree to tree to avoid hungry predators on the ground!

Maybe I should call him the "floor is lava" monkey...

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

100 Silhouettes-Britt

This was not an easy challenge for me, so I'm pretty shaky about showing what I've come up with, but in the spirit of learning and silly looking woobly creatures, here they are!

I'm starting to see myself leaning toward very s-curve like shapes, as well as big looming figures and multiple arm... things. I tried to do these fast when I was relatively tired so I wouldn't second guess everything I painted. In attempt to inspire myself a bit more I threw a texture, a grid to keep me focused and from recounting constantly, and some color in the background... but I ended up scribbling out whatever came to me in the moment.

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.

Greater Amazon Jungle Troll

I want to revisit these to touch them up after I work on something else for a bit to clear my brain, but I present to you the Amazon Jungle Troll!

1800's American Troll

I decided to do with a mid 1800's American troll for this one. With genres like steampunk, the industrial revolution is romanticized, and is heavily focused on high class citizens and fancy, decorative machinery. Since we're working with trolls, I thought it'd be a great opportunity to do something a lot more grungy.

These trolls are integrated into human society, hoping to make a better living. However, lower class working American's survived on very low pay and hard labor. Being a troll, this guy is incredibly strong, an ideal candidate for a job at a steel mill. He is intelligent by troll standards, but still not quite enough to realize he's not being paid as much as he should. His wife proudly holds their night's dinner, a tiny rabbit. As trolls started growing up in a more civilized society, they evolved to be much less aggressive than their wild, savage cousins, though still known to loose their temper occasionally.


I wish I could have done another illustration with one of these guys, but work has been less than pleasant these past few weeks. However, if I do find the time to do so, I will definitely share, even if its late :)