Terryl Whitlatch

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

Here is an interview where Whitlatch discusses her work and process in front of students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw4tonAYHhw

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.