Terryl Whitlatch is a Creature Designer
with years of experience and has worked on projects such as Star Wars episode
1, Brother Bear and Brave. Majoring in vertebrate zoology and anatomy, she
combines art and science as a scientific and wildlife illustrator, building her
designs from the bones and muscles up.
“A
creature designer is an artistic scientist who endeavors to grasp the why of
the creature, why it is what it is, and then shares that vision with the rest
of us.” (Terryl Whitlatch)
While working on Star Wars the Phantom
menace, it took a year and a half to create Jar Jar Binks because of his
importance to connect with younger audiences; George Lucas took most of the
direction for this concept. Other creatures such as Sebulba the pod racer took
only an afternoon.
Other films she’s worked on include:
-
John carter
-
Star Wars Clone Wars (some of
her work from the previous film was used)
-
Brother Bear
-
Brave
- Jumanji
She takes a lot of inspiration from real
life animals and studies them in great detail. Her work shows the amount of
hours studying anatomy as she explores each creature’s movement and behavior.
Reading up on her other books and films that she has worked on shall be very
beneficial to my own studies.
“Real
animals are apart of creature design and all animals are the basis of creature
design.”
She mentions that studying the behavior of
real animals adds to creature design and that creating the bone and muscle
structures helps for other parts of the creatures’ production. It allows for
riggers to see where the joints are in the creature etc.
During the interview there were discussion
on characters and animals having multiple limbs. Whitlatch said that there were
a number of factors to think about such as the forces of gravity, the use of
energy and calories for bigger animals. Insects such as ants are restricted to
their small size because of their exo-skeleton, making gravity and energy use
not much of a problem to them. The progression of the story is important as well
as the suspension of disbelief. Within Avatar, all the creatures had 6 limbs
whereas the Na’vi people had 4. This would be because of keeping the story telling
simple and easier to create.
Whitlatch answered a lot of the student’s
questions and her advice for creature design artists is to learn how to draw
animals as a basis for your designs. Lean as much as you can on animal taxonomy
and zoology to inform your designs. For creating artwork, her main advice is to
not get lost in the crowd and to have your own voice when creating your work. Below
are some inspiring quotes from the interview.
“Be
good at drawing real animals, this is the foundation, you have to pay attention
to them because that will inform your creature designs.”
“[Avoid]
drawing in the styles of what’s sheek today.”
“Horses
are the most important animal you can learn how to draw within the
entertainment industry.”
“Know
how to draw animals really, really, well.”
All images from this blog post I have scanned myself from the referenced book below:
Whitlatch T. Edited by Banducci G. 2010. Animals Real and Imagined. Culver City,
US. Design Studio Press.
