Creature 1: Redesign

After speaking with Lynn about how I could use what I've learnt the past few weeks and apply them to creature 1, I started to redesign it. At first I wanted to change a little bit of the creature, mostly just the feet but I ended up changing the whole body. I began with the original silhouette and developed it from there. It is easier to see the weight distribution of the animal when it's just the silhouette.

I took inspiration from a Parasaurolophus, which is a herbivore dinosaur who also carries a lot of weight. I wanted to give this creature more fat around the feet and legs to act as shock absorbers due to its huge size. It's legs are now a lot stronger for charging at competitors or predators. The final creature is the last silhouette; this creature is now a lot more balanced. 

Next I will be creating the skeleton, muscle structure and the final renders for this creature. I don't think I will be able to do full turnaround sheets because of time constraints but I will do my best. 

Creature 3: final colours/textures

Above are the final colours and textures for creature 3. From left to right I'll go through each of them.

Mottle
This is the colour and texture of coral. The creature uses this amongst the coral as it hunts for food and hides from predators.

Disruptive 
This pattern is used to confuse whatever is looking at it. The creature moves its fins to hide its face and change its silhouette, creating even further confusion. I really like how this one turned out like because even in its neutral stance, the features on the creatures face are hard to read, which is the whole point of this pattern - to confuse whatever is looking at it.

Uniform
This is probably one of my favourite colour and texture for this creature. This pattern is the colour and texture of sand and some rocks. The creature can also use this to hide while hunting or from predators.

Afraid
With this pattern, the creature turns into when it is afraid or startled. It can't help changing into this colour and it is very dangerous when it does as it is very easy to spot. Once the creature calms down, it will change into one of the other three colours.

Pygmy Seahorse

Above are images of a Pygmy Seahorse. I think these little guys are so cute and as you can see from the second image, very very small. What I found interesting is how even a creature as small as these guys, still need to blend into their environment to survive and hide from predators. I really like how they even physically resemble their environment with little red bumps to match the coral they live in. I can take these creatures and use them as inspiration for creature 3 as these creatures are good examples of an animal using its body to camouflage into its environment.

Creature 3: Colour/texture variations

Above are colour and texture variations that creature 3 could have. Because of the the amount of different colours and textures, I won't have the time to fully render them out on the creature so I've done them like this. When I pick out the best ones, I'll test them out on a fully rendered creature before doing final turnaround sheets.
The different groups are the pattern templates that Cephalopods have. They are:
a) Uniform - little to no contrast to the pattern
b) Mottle - small scale light and dark splodges
c) Disruptive - to interfere with the recognition of what the animal is

I will be picking one of each for the creature and an added fear template that the creature turns into when they are startled.

Supervisor meeting

I had my meeting with Lynn today, I showed her all the work and research I've done since last week. we talked about the layout of my book and how to make things as clear as possible to the reader.
She also said I should get my feedback from my contextual review this week, so as soon as I get that I'll be working on it.
Overall it was a short meeting but I have plenty to do with Creature 3 and editing creatures 1 and 2. Lynn's going to be off next week so the next meeting we have together will be on the 11th April at 1pm. By then I should have the majority of my practical work completed and starting to put it all together for the book. As well as corrections of my dissertation.

Creature 3: Anatomy

Above is the skeleton and muscle turnaround sheets for creature 3. This creature does not have a huge or complex muscle structure as it has very limited movement because it spends most of its life either hiding or lurking. It does have a small skeleton that helps support the body and will be an advantage for when its tail develops as it will allow the whole creature to evolve fast and bigger.
This species is full of potential and in a few thousand years, could even become the seas top predator.
For this creature I wanted to explore what it would be to not fully evolved, as in it has a lot of potential to become a much more bigger and complex creature. I want to continue on with this creature after uni and explore its development.

Artist Pipelines

Concept Artist and Creature Designer, Brynn Metheney shares her techniques on warming up and creating inspiration on her blog. Metheney uses a website called Pinterest where she collects references and inspirational images of nature and animals. The collection allows Metheney to view a variety of animal species at random, showing the differences and similarities of different animals. Metheney states that during her warm up doodles, she has a tendency to incorporate the same traits of forward facing eyes and leathery hides into her designs because those traits is what she likes the most and is more comfortable with. To help combat this trait routine, Metheney uses her collection of references on Pinterest and scrolls through the large collection of animals. She would scroll through the collection fast and wherever the page lands on, she’ll use those animals on that page and create a creature from it.         

“Smashing up different animals is essentially the essence of what creature design is. You're taking what you know about the natural world and using those traits to create something new and exciting.”

Above is an example of how Metheney uses Pinterest to inspire new creature designs. She uses this technique to warm up and to encourage her to keep using fresh and unusual animal traits within her designs. This method is slightly different to Terryl Whitlatch’s work, as Metheney takes traits of different creatures and put them together, whereas Whitlatch creates a creature with its environment and purpose in mind. Both methods are credible, and it is up to the designer to develop their own understanding of nature and how they see the world.  

Ken Barthelmey is a creature designer who uses both digital painting and 3D to create his work. On his website he answers commonly asked question about his work, his pipeline and his advice for student artists. Below are the questions and answers from Barthelmey’s blog.   

What is a typical pipeline you go through as a concept artist, after receiving an initial brief for a creature?
I always start with very rough scribbles. I do these mainly for myself in order to get ideas and to find a specific look. After that I start with more detailed pencil sketches which I present to my client. If a sketch gets approved I start enhancing the design and colour it in photoshop. However in my recent jobs, I immediately jumped into Zbrush after the approval. Zbrush is a fantastic and very powerful tool, I always enhance my designs when I work in 3D.

How do you strike a balance between making something look ‘cool’ versus something that is believable?
If you design a creature too 'cool' or fantastical, it will look unbelievable and silly. And vice versa. If you make a design too realistic, it will look boring. In order to make a good design I think it's important to have a good taste of realism and imagination. I love seeing an actual anatomy in a design, even if it's mechanical. Using reference photos from real animals is always a great help to accomplish that.

Besides creating believable anatomy, what else do you consider while creating a creature?
I always consider creatures as characters. Even bloodthirsty beasts with long teeth should have their own soul and backstory. What is its motivation? What is its goal? What evolutionary functions does it need in order to survive... The more thoughts go into a design, the better the result.

How long does a typical design job take?
That's very difficult to answer, since it depends on many factors. I like to have a fixed deadline from my clients, that way I can easily structure my working process. Depending on the project, this can range from one day to six weeks or even more. I like to have at least one day for sketching ideas and additional 1-2 days for a beauty render. A complex creature with over a thousand arms takes longer, of course, than a simple blob creature.
 

You are an artist who likes working with pencil, why?
It's a great and fast way to present early ideas. Working with traditional tools has a different feeling. For me it's the first meeting of the image that I had in my mind. I was fortunate to work with very creative clients who immediately saw the potential in early sketches. Sometimes however it can be difficult to judge an early pencil sketch. So presenting ideas in a compelling way is very important. A sketch should never be seen as the final design thought, it's only the first brick in the wall.

Do you have any advice for students? What makes a good Artist/Designer?
You shouldn't have dreams, you should have goals! Simply follow your passion, you can only do the best work when you are motivated. You don't need expensive softwares in order to make art, start with pencil and paper and learn the basics.
From the technical side, I think everyone can learn how to paint. It's all about how hard you are working on your skills and how disciplined you are. But what a good Artist/Designer marks is creativity. Creativity makes every artist unique; you need to be able to come up with singular ideas and solving problems in the easiest way.

Overall, these artists use very different methods and pipelines to create their creatures. It is clear that each artist has their own routine and reasoning behind why they use certain techniques. It is up to the designer to develop their own pipeline that makes them comfortable and able to create new and interesting creature designs.  

Creature 3: Head close up and texture studies

I tried to draw the head close up for creature 3 but I wasn't certain how I wanted the texture to be. I've never drawn a sea animal before and although I've seen them in real life, I wasn't sure how to render it out for this creature.
To solve this problem, I decided to do some texture studies of different sea animals. Different animals in the sea have different textures. Dolphins have smooth/rubbery skin texture, fish have scales and animals such as sting rays have a rough, sandpaper type texture. The creatures that I wanted to study for creature 3 are fish, seahorse and octopus skin.












This was really good practice for me in general and I learned a lot. I also need to sort out my brushes in photoshop because I have far too many that I don't use. This'll most likely happen after uni though.
I really like the textures of the octopus and the seahorse; I like how parts of the seahorse look a bit like jelly and I like the roughness of the octopus. I want to explore the anatomy of creature 3 before deciding on a texture; I also want to explore different types of colours and textures the creature could turn into so I need time to think what the best way to develop it is.  

Book Layouts

I've been thinking on how to layout my book for the showcase. I want to finish all artwork at the beginning of April so there is enough time for the book to be printed and delivered. A lot of concept art books look very busy, there is a lot of sketches on one page and then a huge landscape covering two pages. There is a lot for me to experiment with, I do know that I want the layout to be clear and the design development of each creature to be linear, as well as the book itself, I want it to be landscape. As soon as I finish development of all creatures, I'll produce some layouts and experiment a bit. Blurb, the company I'm using to print my book, has a few templates which I'll be using to create my book.

Creature 3: Animal Anatomy

Above are anatomy studies of a Seahorse, Lionfish, Yellowtail Snapper and a Salmon. The anatomy of fish and other sea creatures is very different to animals on land, the Seahorse for example almost has an exo-skeleton structure. It is supported by this outside structure that is common in insects.
The other sketches show the skeletons of the Yellowtail Snapper and the Lionfish, both of these fish are medium in size; although I see creature 3 as a small creature, compared to Earth animals it'll be medium size.
The study of the Salmon shows its muscle structure, it is pretty simple as this fish has limited movements compared to animals on land. This creature does not have to worry about keeping balance or falling over. Creature 3 will also have a simple muscle structure as it spends most of its life either still while it hunts or hiding from prey.  

Creature 3: More development sketches

I decided to develop the creature even further after critique from Lynn during one of our meetings. With the last development sketches I liked how the creature looked head on, but from the side I was not happy with it as it began to look like I was just bashing creatures together, which is not what I wanted to do with this project. I played about with the proportions and weight of the body until I developed something that was more balanced. I kept the tentacle at the end of the face but now it can roll it up into a ball for when it is not in use; I also kept the beak mouth.
I am a lot more happier now with the last 3 designs, my next step is to start thinking about the colour and skin texture for this creature. I plan on doing some studies on octopus etc because I have never painted any animal with that kind of texture, so I think I need to practice before doing anything final for creature 3.

Supervisor Meeting

With my meeting today with Lynn, we talked about how creature 3 was developing. The creature appears to be top heavy and we discussed about developing the creature further and pushing its design more. As I research into sea creatures, some of them are able to change colour such as some octopuses, I should do some more research into how and why some sea animals do this. 

I talked about how I thought I wouldn't be able to create a 4th creature in time for the book to be printed and delivered. We discussed using the last few weeks on finishing creature 3 and redesigning some traits on creatures 1 and 2. Using what I've learnt through the year and apply that to the first two creatures. I also need to do some more editing to creature 2's final piece by adding more highlights from the light coming through the cave entrance. I need to create a perspective chart of each creature, showing them beside a human and other creatures so people who are viewing my book, can get an idea of how bog/small each creature is. 

We discussed about how I haven't received any reply from the industry experts and that I should focus on other artists professional pipelines so I'll be broadening my knowledge of other artists workflows. We also talked about how I want my book to look like and that I should create a mood board of different book layouts to help focus my ideas.   

Overall, a lot of discussed today. I have a lot of work todo and I don't have much time left. Lynn and I will be meeting the same time next week, monday 1pm. 

How do Cephalopods change colour?

A Cephalopod are creatures that can change colours such as Squids, Octopuses and Cuttlefish. Their skin contains cells of the colours red, yellow and brown with reflectors underneath to create the greens and blues. These cells are called Chromatophores and are made to change colour by the contraction of muscles (see image to the right). This action is very fast, and they can change colour in less than a second. These creatures can also change the texture of their skin, to resemble rocks and other bumpy surfaces and they can change their body position to mimic other creatures for protection. For example they can mimic a Lion Fish which is poisonous, meaning a lot of predators learn to stay away from them.  
Today, scientists don't know how exactly they change colour because these creatures are colour blind, how do they know what colour to change into? What is know that it is a conscious action made by the creature to contract its muscles to copy the colour and texture of the environment. These colour changes can also change depending on how the animal is feeling, it can change to warn potential predators or even when they are startled, they turn completely white.
Some Cephalopods can produce light - bioluminescence. However, I've already explored and created the bioluminescence trait in my second creature design so I want to focus the skin colour changes for creature number 3.

Cephalopods have around 3 pattern templates that they use. Above is an image of 3; camouflage for these creatures is about fooling whatever is looking at you, not looking exactly like the background. 

pattern templates:  

a) Uniform - little to no contrast to the pattern 

b) Mottle - Small scale light and dark splodges 

c) Disruptive - to interfere with the recognition of what the animal is. 

Overall, researching into how and why these animals change colour and texture is very interesting to me and I can't wait to explore how my creature will look. Below are links to the websites where I got the images from and did my research. 

http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/how-octopuses-and-squids-change-color

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-squid-and-octopuse/ 

Test printing final pieces

I've test printed these two final pieces that I've created so far so see how it would turn out. Granted I printed these out in uni and the paper quality isn't what I'll be using for my book, but I can already tell that there needs more contrast in both pieces. It just looks a bit dull to how I've painted it, I'll only put the contrast up a little bit and test it out again. With the creature 2 painting, it is very dark, it did turn out lighter than I thought it would but it still needs to be lighted and more contrast as it looks a bit dull. I wanted to test print some of my development work like the final turnaround sheets and some anatomy studies to see if the detail remains in tact. Unfortunately, the printer jammed so I'll need to do this another time.  

Creature 2: Final piece edit

After the meeting with Lynn and the feedback I got on this painting, I've changed a few things. The edited one is at the top and the original one is below it. I've made the cave much darker on the left side of the image and gave more glow to the fireflies and the lure. I've also added in some of that yellow glow onto the rocks in the background as reflection. I tried to make the opening of the cave on the right side of the image more apparent by making it slightly lighter.
I need to test out how this image prints as well as the other final piece and development work. After seeing how it prints out like, I'll do some more editing.

Swatch Kit from Blurb

I ordered a swatch kit from Blurb which shows you all the different kinds of paper they off. Altogether there is 12 different types ranging from economy B&W to Premium Lustre. The paper that I think will be good for my book in quality and price wise is the Standard semi-matte photo paper. This paper is 118 GSM so its not too thick or thin and bright white. As it is semi-matte, there is a slight shine to it which will make the colour of my images brighter and have more contrast, but it is not as shiny as the glossy paper.
With this swatch kit, I have a much better idea of the paper they offer and which one will be the best for my book. I'm excited to have my booked finished to see the whole thing made.

Preproduction Pipelines

A production pipeline is key to focusing the next steps to take within practical research. Below shows the beginning of each creature concept, the inkblots. After outlining the inkblot, development of design and anatomy will be undertaken until the creature is finished, then final evaluation. The steps within the design and anatomy process are charcoal sketches, development sketches, illustrative pieces, head close up, animal anatomy studies, creature anatomy studies, colour/fur variations, and then the final turnaround sheets. After the final design of each creature has been created, a final piece will be painted that shows that creature interacting with either its environment or other creatures of the same species.    

 Above are figures 1, 2 and 3 which show the development of the production pipeline itself. Figure 3 is the final pipeline; it shows each stage of the development of the creature designs. First section is the design of the creature, how it looks, how to socializes, raise their young and what kind of environment they live in. The anatomy section focuses on the study of real animals and creating a body that is well suited for that creature on the outcomes from the design. If the creature has not been developed to a high standard and does not make sense in terms of its body to its environment etc. the process will continue through the circle of design and anatomy until a well developed and believable creature has been created. The final stage is the creation of the final piece. A painting will be made showing a scene of that creature within its natural habitat. The scene could be of a mother and calf, creatures interacting with each other, or them hunting etc. After the completion of the final piece, a final evaluation will be completed which is a simple look over all the final development pieces of that creature to ensure that it can survive in its. If there is a problem and the creature does not fully suit its environment, the development pieces will be taken back to the design and anatomy parts of the production pipeline to work out the problem and to create a solution.

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

Overall, the production pipeline has been a success as none of the creatures had to be taken back into the design and anatomy stages during the final evaluation. The development of each creature went through the final production pipeline smoothly. Certain parts of the pipeline could be taken out such as the charcoal sketches as they did not add anything to the actual design, the development sketches is where the most exploration had taken place. To take its place within the design part of the pipeline, environmental sketches could give a clearer understanding of where each creature lives and how it adapts to it.