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 :)

Stephen Green - Troll WIP

I decided to go with a Japanese Fire-God themed troll.  The fire god (or Kami) was brought about upon the creation of the world and thus began the death of the world.  The troll has a demonic presence.  This idea was fueled by goggling trolls and trying to decide what kind of influences I wanted the creature to have.

These creatures cause fear in any who come in contact with them.  They are top heavy creatures with short legs that somehow support a large bulk.  Their heads are tiny in proportion to such massive bodies.  With huge fists they smash their way through a cavernous volcanic habitat.

I need to make sure that it's feet properly support the weight of its body before moving onto another drawing.  Of course I want to do some more small silhouettes.  

The creature needs a scary pose to showcase it properly. Finally I need to work on using some reference to creature texture on the creature which my last pieces were lacking in.  I'm thinking that since the creature lives in a volcanic cavern (perhaps mountains around Japan) that it's bulk is made of scale like metal that would reflect volcanic light.

More soon!

Brittany WIP

Deadline is tomorrow and I'm frantically painting my day in the life of a troll!

This is just a little sliver of my workspace right now... Lots of horses, conquistadors and... the hulk. Good reference is good reference!