Final Piece and Reflection

Here is my final piece for my first creature. I intend to create final pieces for all of my creatures and display them at my showcase. I also want to produce a book with all of the skeleton, muscle structures, illustrative pieces etc so audiences can see the development of each creature.

Within this painting, there are multiple reasons why this situation could occur. One is that this very poorly and young creature who's almost an adolescent, has broken his entire horn off. This could of happened from fighting with others, or it got very sick when it was younger, delaying the growth of the horn. Either way, this little one has stumbled onto this adults territory full of lush grass. This powerful female does not want a sick, weak creature on her lands that could attract predators, endangering her own calf as well as eating her grass. Therefore she has chased him off her land and onto the dry plains.

Another reason is that this is her own calf, who is sick and again, delaying the horn growth. The mother has become pregnant again and wants the new calf to have the best start in life. Therefore, chasing the sick one off of her land to make room for the new baby. Many animals on Earth do this, as to not waste energy and time raising a sick baby that'll most likely die.

Overall, I enjoyed painting this piece, and because I intend to display this at my showcase I'll most likely be editing it for the rest of the semester. There are a few details that I can see already such as the spine on the younger creature hasn't been highlighted enough. The muscle underneath it has but that gives the impressive that it's the spine, so it looks like quite a painful pose. I'll be editing that soon as well as the rest of the piece.

Sketches of the Final Piece

For my final piece, I've taken some sketches from my illustrative pieces and render them out into a digital painting. The adult, I lowered the head so it looks more like its charging, I tried to change the legs but in this image the creature looks too heavy, its trotting like an elephant or rhino would. I do want this creature to be heavily charging but not that heavy, it still needs to have speed and a but of agility. The adolescent was a bit difficult too, its running away, panicked and throwing a few bucks. I want to show the panic by having it a little bit off balance. With this image its too off balance and it needs more work.

Here are the final sketches of the two creatures. The adult looks a lot more faster, agile and it still looks heavy. The adolescent I'm happy with too as its leaping in the air. My next step is figuring out the layout of this piece. As you can see I've incorporated the golden spiral to help me with the layout.

Finally, I also used the rule of thirds to fix any layout issues too. I'm really looking forward to painting this and also excited to start developing my next creature.

Turnaround Sheets

Here are the final turnaround sheets for my first creature. The first one is the female, the second male. On the first image of each turnaround sheet, I have the creature without the growth on the face, the rest of the images do. This is because I want to show what the creatures face looks like underneath and because there is already of view of the head in the direction with the protective growth I thought it would still be appropriate. This has been done for both male and female turnaround sheets.
Now that I have the final design, I will create a 'final piece' which will be a digital painting with two of these creatures interacting. This will show even more story behind the creatures, much like the illustrative pieces. The painting will be fully rendered with colour too and it will round off the development of this creature nicely for me to move onto developing creature number 2.

Front and Back views

Before completing a turnaround sheet, I've created some studies of the front and back views for my creature. During a group meeting with Simone and several other students, the main comment that I had was that there was a lot of side views of my creature (apart from my sketches). Therefore I have taken on their advice and created front and back views of the skeleton, muscle structure and the creature fully rendered out.

Above is a skeleton view, front and back. The same skeleton is to the right but with outlines of the muscle structure. I didn't completely draw the creature with all four legs, the rest of the body etc as it would of been difficult to read and taken the viewers attention away from where I wanted them to focus.

Here is the same muscle structure but rendered out a little bit. I also added in the head just to give the viewer a bit of context, but like I've said, I haven't added in the rest of the body because it would of made the image difficult to read. 

Normally this creature would only hold its head this high if it was on high alert, because of the weight it has to hold and the energy it uses up. But for this blog post on the front and back muscles I have this creature holding up its head so the viewer is able to see it. 

In this image, it is the creature rendered out its muscles and a thin layer of skin. This is to show my process of building the creature from the skeleton up. I intend to use this method of rendering on the rest of my creatures within this project.
Also, the tail has been cut off because I want the viewer to be able to see the muscles. With the tail being so large it would of taken up a bit of the image so its but cut off temporarily.

This is the fully rendered out creature, apart from the colour. I decided to show only the female as with the male, they have a thick mane around their neck so obviously it would of covered a lot of the muscle structure that I wanted to show. The males still have the mane but for this post I'm only showing a female.

Although I like this colour scheme, I don't think it would be appropriate for the environment that this creature lives in. I will possibly use this colour pallet in the future on a creature where its more appropriate.
The reasons why I don't think the colour will work is because of the pink and blue tones. The environment that they live in is very hot and dry, they spend most of their lives searching for food or defending their own grasslands. Because the weather is so hot a lot of the grass is a tan colour. Only grass near water sources like a river will have lush green grass.

I like this colour scheme the best, it has both speckles and stripes to confuse predators whether there are multiple of this creature, or on their own. The red/brown colour will have them when roaming through dry lands in search of food. When they have plenty of food, they gain their strength, meaning that they are able to defend themselves more easily than if they were stranded and weak searching for food.

Creature Designer/Concept Artist Key Skills

Below is information from jobs ranging from Creature Designer and Concept artist. These jobs are also for levels of intermediate-senior. When searching for these I couldn't find any appropriate graduate/junior roles. 

While looking through these, its apparent that an extensive knowledge of human and animal anatomy is needed, and knowledge with 3D is desired. I do want to brand myself as a 2D artist however, showing that I can learn new skills and I'm familiar with 3D I believe would help me when I'm job hunting and possibly when creating my creatures. I'm not too sure if I'll have the time to create 3D sculptures of my creatures but I am considering it; it'll all depend on the feedback from my interviews and whether I can produce my creatures fast enough. 

ZeniMax Online Studios, USA (Concept Artist) 

Responsibilities:

• Illustrate a wide range of highly creative character and creature concepts for in-game use
• Assemble reference materials to support the concept designs
• Assist Art Director in establishing and maintaining a visual style for character and creature designs
• Produce art ranging from rough thumbnails to clean line work to print quality images
• Collaborate with other departments to concept strong in-game character concept

Requirements:

• Highly creative, passionate, and driven concept artist
• Ability to rapidly illustrate concepts based on verbal and written directions
•  Ability to create clean orthographic drawings to be used a modeling guide for in-game asset creation when needed
• Strong foundational knowledge of anatomy and proportions with the ability to exaggerate as needed
• Excellent digital Illustration skills with an advanced understanding of Photoshop and or Painter
• Able to take direction from Art Director and collaborate with Character Lead and Animation Lead
• Ability to hit tight schedules as required
• Self-motivated, good communication skills, and team player
• 2 years of game industry or film experience

Desired Skills and Pluses:

• Environment concept capabilities as well as character and creature designs
• 2 years or more of game development experience with one or more shipped titles
• 3D modeling and/or animation skills
• Dedicated gamer
• Knowledge of id software games

Portfolio Requirements:

• Character and Creature designs demonstrating an ability to infuse personality and emotion into designs
• Demonstrate a variety of character types; Creatures, Demons, NPC’s, Space Marines etc.
• Clean isometric drawings to be used as modeling guides for creation of production assets
• Completed polished illustrations demonstrating an ability to render subject matter in an environment

Sony (senior concept artist)

Responsibilities:

• Work with the art director and game director to visually develop characters, creatures, and props.
• Create rough sketches, fully rendered illustrative pieces, material sheets, model turns, movement sheets, pose sheets, paint overs, color palettes and other visual guides as needed by the development team.
• Research pertinent subject matter to bring believability to the characters and creatures as they exist in the game world.
• Undertake research and initiate information gathering prior to the commencement of a new task to ensure game design needs, reference materials, artistic direction and technological considerations are effectively managed to meet defined goals.
• Fully capable of resolving a range of complex artistic development issues for both artists as well as other team members.
• Actively improve skill sets and abilities by keeping aware of industry trends and techniques, evaluating competitive products, learning new software packages and traditional art methods.
• Possess strong time management and prioritization skills. This entails collaborating with the Production group to coordinate task lists to ensure assignments are progressing as expected according to schedules, milestones and overall project goals.
• May serve as an artistic resource for overall product or as a studio resource. This includes, but is not limited to, conducting general research, developing cutting-edge techniques or testing new systems and tools.

Requirements:

• Strong traditional fine art skills, training and production experience (illustration, painting, composition, human anatomy / organic forms, color theory, perspective, 2D & 3D design.)
• Highly proficient in the use of Photoshop/Painter as well as traditional painting/rendering techniques. Understanding of the fundamentals of 3D packages a plus
• Familiarity with video game product development
• Previous or next-gen video game platform experience is desirable
• Good communication, organizational, time management and interpersonal skills

Preferred Skills:

• B.A. in Fine Arts or relevant curriculum - or - equivalent skillset
• Minimum 3 years industry experience or related experience
• 1 or more published titles

ArenaNet (Creature Artist)

Requirements: 

• 3+ years of experience working in game development pipelines
• Must be eligible for work in the U.S. 

Skills:

• Understanding of human and creature anatomy
• Excitement and positive attitude to work with and get along with all of the other members of the team
• Understanding of technical aspects of creature and gameplay design
• Superior eye for shape language, color theory and light/shadow
• High level knowledge working with Maya/Max, Zbrush and Photoshop
• Ability to take and give criticism in a constructive but direct manner
• Self-motivated and passionate attitude toward continued education and the ability to share that knowledge with other team members

Fur variations

Here are multiple fur texture variations on all the colour schemes from the previous post. I studied the patterns of horses and zebras to come to a conclusion of the 3 main types of pattern that would be appropriate for this creature. They are large spots, stripes and speckled.
I'm not a fan of how the large spots came out because they make the creature remind me of a cow, so that pattern is basically scraped. The speckles are nice and I really like the look of number 10. However, I think the stripes look the best on all the colour variations and the ones that I like the most are number 12, which as both speckled and stripes and number 7, which only has stripes.
Right now, I can pick between which one I like the most, I will continue to create the turn around sheet.

Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur

Like many people, I love David Attenborough documentaries and I was really excited to watch this. Within this documentary it shows a creature found in Argentina, that lived 100million years ago. It's also the largest animal to ever walk the Earth, a new species of plant eating dinosaur - the Titanosaur.
This creature had a 2.4m long thigh bone, weighed 70 metric tons, and it had a total length of 37m. This huge creature had an unusually small spinal cord. Ours its about a thumbs width and as you can see from the image above, it's not that much bigger. This would mean that it would take 1 whole second for information to go from its tail to its brain.

The scientists looked at living animals to study how they coped with being so large. Todays largest land animal is the Elephant, they hold their weight on their toe nails and have fatty pads in their feet to be used as shock absorbers. Large animals have a problem with blood circulation, Elephants combat this by having thick, tight and elastic skin on their legs to keep pressure high, to push the blood back up their legs to make sure theres no blood clotting. They also hold their legs directly underneath the body, like columns to hold their weight.  
The Titanosaur's heart was extremely powerful, it had to be, to be able to pump blood around this massive creature. The heart itself, had a 6 foot circumference and weighed 230 kilos. It would beat every 5 seconds and with every beat, pump 90 litres of blood around the body.

A creature this huge needs a lot of energy and food. The Titanosaur would eat plants that were hard to digest, they would eat huge amounts and take around 10 days to digest it. They would need to eat enough to fill a skip everyday.
The neck bones in the Titanosaur's had lots of hole in them, these holes made the weight of their neck 35% less than it would of if it was made from solid bone. Along with their huge tail, that helped to counter balance the weight of their neck.

This creature wasn't fully grown, its bones showed signs that it was still growing and it is already 10% larger than the previous record holder of largest animal to walk the Earth.
Overall I loved this documentary and I have learned so many things about this creature and how other creatures work to support their huge weight. A lot of the information I've learned I can use to help me create large creatures that can support their own body weight much like how these extinct creatures can, and living ones today like the Elephant.

Colour Variations

Here are colour variations of both males and females, I started out with more earth tones and gradually started to experiment with colour. My personal favourite ones are numbers 3, 4 and 6. I've been thinking about the type of environment this creature would live in and because it is a prey animal - an aggressive one still - it would need some kind of camouflage and colour to help it bled into its surroundings more. The world that they live in, is very dry with only certain parts near water sources, rich in tall grass. This creature would need to be able to blend into a dry environment and one with long grass at the same time.  
I've learnt in a documentary (a few years ago) that lions see in black and white, meaning that the actual colour didn't matter as much as the pattern to them. Zebras with their stripes are very easily seen when they are alone, however when together the stripes blend together making it impossible for a lion to pick out an individual. When looking at other prey animals in Africa, a lot of them have stripes in one form or another on their body.
Next I want to explore different patterns that this creature could have to help in survive in its environment and lifestyle.

Male and Female

Above is an adult female, she is fully coated in short hairs, has the protective growth on her face and a fully grown horn. This is a prime, strong and healthy creature.

Here is an adult male, he is the same size as a female, coated in short hairs apart from the longer and thicker hairs around the face, neck, lower half of the legs and the tail. The males grow this thick hair because both male and females can grow the horn, so they need something to standout a little bit. Males are roamers in search of food and females, it is only females who dominate a piece of land to bring up their young.

New Pipeline

Here is a new pipeline quickly drawn up after discussing it with Simone. She said that my last one wasn't made clear enough when one creature finished and another began. Therefore this one starts off with my inkblots, and goes through the processes of design and anatomy until it is finished, ready for the final evaluation. A creature design can go around the Design and Anatomy part of my pipeline several times, until I feel that is is a finished design.
This pipeline will develop further and will most likely change again with the information I receive from the industry experts interviews.

Creature 1: Anatomy

Here are my anatomy sketches for my creature. As you can see from the image on the left, I have created the skeleton and muscle structures. As I mentioned before about how a Bison holds its head vertically, I wanted to incorporate the same to my creature as they have a lot of weight and pressure coming from the horn onto their skull. Holding their head like this makes it easier for them. They can hold their head higher, but it uses a lot of energy, therefore they will only hold their head up high when on high alert.
Their tail acts as a counter balance to the weight of the front of the body.

Below, is a rendered image of the creature. This is the creatures skin, no fur has been added on. I really wanted the viewer to be able to see the muscles of this creature, especially since I put so much time into studying and drawing them. This creature is incredibly strong, and I wanted to give the viewer that impression. I believe I have done a good job so far, one of the more difficult challenges I face now is texture and colour of the creature.

Group Meeting with Simone

This morning before my 10am lecture, I had a group meeting with Simone and several other students. We took it in turns to discuss what our project was about and what we were hoping to achieve by the end of semester 2.

I showed the group what I had completed with my first creature so far and the feedback that I got from a student was that I should create more images showing different angles of the creature; i.e. front, back, above etc. I also discussed with Simone that I was considering looking into creating some 3D work in Z-Brush to make me more employable and expand my skills. I was told not to; as I should only do what I am passionate about and I should never do something that I think will make me more employable. This is something I want to research further. Specific artists such as Terryl Whitlatch, only works in 2D which I admire, however a lot of creature designers do create work within 3D software whether it is only a quick head sculpt. This is a question I can ask industry experts within my interviews, whether expanding my skills into 3D would be beneficial to me or should an artist like myself focus on perfecting my 2D skills.

Overall, it was an interesting meeting and I enjoyed seeing other students work too. I left with new tasks and research to complete.

• Create turnaround sheets for my creatures
• Research into 2D and 3D Creature Designers
• Start to create the questions for my interviews

Skull Variations

Here are skull variations so show the growth rate and what it would mean to have parts of it broken off.

1. Full Adult, Strong/Experienced
This is an experienced adult with many successes in life. the fully grown horn would mean that they have the best grasslands to raise its young, or the stature to attract females. (Males are roamers, in search of food and females, only females take on their own territory.) An adult like this would have a very nice life, rarely would anything threaten it and others move out of its way. This adult would demand respect wherever it went.  

2. Adolescent
This young creature has had a very experienced mother, mostly like one with a fully grown horn. Even though it has had the best start in life, it would have moved away from its mother and now has the challenges of predators, fighting and trying to gain enough experience and keep its horn in top condition to keep succeeding in life.

3. Damaged Adult
This adult used to have a fully grown horn but has gotten into a fight, most likely over grasslands. However, this adult would still be high in the pecking order has it hasn't lost too much. It will still take years for the rest of it to grow back but it could of been a lot worse.

4. Damaged Adult
This adult has gotten into a fight and pretty certain that it has lost. Quite a bit of its horn has been destroyed and it'll be very low in the pecking order. This creature will have a very difficult time protecting itself, fighting for food and if male, have no hope in attracting a female.

5. Baby
This is the first initial growth of horn for a baby (around 6 months), its mother is doing well so far, keeping it out of trouble so it doesn't damage its horn.

6. Strong Adolescent
Much like number 2, this adolescent is a bit older than it but has done very well so far. It would of won some of its first fights and has a bright future ahead of it.

Head Close up

Here is a head study of my creature to show more detail. As I've mentioned before, there is a protective growth on the creatures face to help project themselves when fighting and bashing their heads together. The growth would have a layer of enamel but soft tissue underneath that could be used as a shock absorber. Only when the creature is fully matured will this start to grow on their face. Around the rest of their face they have hair, the rest of their body has hair too. It would be short hair and it'll get longer around the face, much like whiskers.

Visual Research and References

Above is some visual research on different types of Antelope, there's also an African Buffalo in there too. The basic shape of these antelope is similar to how I want my creature to be. The hump on the shoulder blades with short legs etc. The actual movement of my creature is heavy but still agile enough to turn corners quickly, they aren't especially fast though. This is what I think of when looking at the African Buffalo and Wildebeest. I think my creature can take aspects from all these animals. 

Below, is a page from Terryl Whitlatch's new book, Science of Creature Design: Understanding Animal Anatomy. This animal is an Eland, its very similar to a Kudu, they are both types of Antelope. I think that this is the perfect reference to have as well as my other anatomy studies when creating the anatomy of my creature. Obviously I will try and change a few things, aim to create a new image rather than just copying. The pose however, I think is perfect.  

As my project develops, my creatures will become more complicated in their design, studying up on animal anatomy will help me inform my designs to be as realistic as possible.    

Image used for Eland I scanned from Terryl Whitlatches book, Science of Creature Design: Understanding Animal Anatomy

Links to the images I've used in this post:

http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/sites/default/files/juicebox_slides/addax.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bf/99/4b/bf994b673a66203336c68faadf9eca67.jpg

https://www.afrizim.com/Image/travel-guides/animals/antelope/Red-Haartebeest.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Male_greater_kudu.jpg

Anatomy Studies

For my project, I want to create realistic anatomy for all of my creatures. Anatomy that allows them to move the way they should, and anatomy that helps them survive the world they live in.

For the creature I'm working on now, I have silhouettes of Earth animals that resemble it. The figure on the left shows an American Bison, African Buffalo and an African Wildebeest. By studying the anatomy of these animals, I will be able to make informed anatomy for my creatures. Between these silhouettes, I think that the African Buffalo and African Wildebeest resemble my creature the most in terms of body shape. The Bison it a bit too large and thick, making it not as flexible as my own creature design does.
I will try to look into all three of these creatures to help educate myself on animal anatomy further.    

To the right is a drawing of a Wildebeest skull. From trying to research into wildebeests and their anatomy, there is very little studies on them at all. When searching for wildebeest anatomy, many images and articles came up on live ones, or dead ones being pulled apart, but barely anything written or illustrated that would be useful for me.
The skull is a valuable find, as I think my creature has a very similar face to this animal.  





Moving onto the American Bison, there are surprisingly, images and references to their anatomy. From my research however, only their skeleton but thats a lot better than one skull!
The Bison's skeleton has a lot of weight to carry, this is why I'm interested in looking at its anatomy to see what aspects of its design I can take to help my creature cope with the weight of its horn. This animal holds it head very vertical, unlike other animals, holding them almost with their nose in the air. This could be because it has restricted movements because of its weight or it just finds it more comfortable.  











An unexpected turn, but an Ox had plenty of references images for me to study. An Ox also is quite top heavy which still makes it appropriate for me to study for my creature.
This Ox can hold its head up higher than the Bison, it has more freedom of movement. Its skeleton however, is slanted downward towards its front legs, which is something that I do not want to incorpriate into my creatures as they need to be a bit more agile than an ox, still a heavy moving creature but must be able to move its front legs freely.

An Ox also has plenty of muscle images for me to study which as of now I couldn't find anything appropriate enough for my creature. Studying these muscles will help me create a muscle structure for my own creature, it wont be exactly the same, however it'll help me build up my creature from the skeleton up.

Overall, I have learned a lot from doing these studies and I feel a lot more confident in further developing my creature. I intend to do this process of studying real life animals to help inform my creature designs.

Principles of Creature Design: Creating imaginary animals

Here is the second book of Terryl Whitlatch I bought during the christmas holidays. This book focuses on using all that knowledge of animal anatomy from the previous book, and using it to create creatures. Within the book, there's sketches of imaginary creatures, their anatomy, their character and even creatures Whitlatch has made for Star Wars Episode 1. I've really enjoyed reading through these books and will continue to look back on them for reference when needed. Below is some quotes taking from the book. 

“Designing a creature that can survive in a world, interact with its own and other species, and go on to make an impact is designing with intent – the end goal of creature design.” Whitlatch page 9

“All creatures designed for the entertainment industry need a backstory, and all creatures must engage in an ongoing story. Natural history, personality, and plot combine, and we design for a world.” Whitlatch page 9

“Inspiration from real animals, exploratory sketches, detailed studies – all of this is necessary in order for a story to be told well and for disbelief to take a vaction.” Whitlatch page 51

“sketching is the daily bread that energises the imagination and informs the mind.” Whitlatch page 89

“Composition, decorative devices, colour scheme, and the characters themselves all combine to tell the story.” Whitlatch page 105

“As artists, experiencing frustration and dissatisfaction with one’s work is par for the course and is normal – it means we’re learning.” Whitlatch page 201

All images and quotes in this blog post I have scanned/quoted myself from the referenced book below: 

Whitlatch T. Edited by Banducci G. 2015. Principles of Creature Design: Creating Imaginary Animals. Design Studio Press.