Introduction

Hello and welcome to this tutorial on creature design!

 

To clarify in the beginning: The goal of this tutorial is not primarily to go over certain rendering aspects but it is rather a step-by-step guide you can follow to execute ideas and thoughts for a successful creature concept. I will go over certain processes and tools that are helpful, while demonstrating everything on my own creature design and giving you insight on my thoughts.

 

Before we begin I want to stress that this workflow is of course laborious. Good creature design needs time, so do not be discouraged. Take breaks and enjoy the ride!

Step 1: Skeleton

[Disclaimer! You don't always need to create a skeleton for your creature. For some people, it might even limit their creative output. I recommend trying it at least before you jump straight into step 2 because the skeleton can be really helpful in your creation process!]

 

 

For a solid creature later on, we have to think about the foundation of it. - The skeleton.

 

I recommend you brainstorm a little bit and then hit the canvas with your idea.

You don't have to have a fully fleshed out idea in your mind yet, but think about the direction your idea could go. Do not hold onto it for too long. Sketch it out and then put down the next one.

Look at real life skeleton imagery of animals for a guideline and try to enlarge, shrink or crop certain parts of the skeleton! Sketch at least three of them next to each other and try to be diverse. Look at all kinds of mammal skeletons in different habitats!

 

Note that at this point your sketch can be really rough. Be aware that every clean line drawing comes from a series of tidied up sketches and we are far away from that.

 

Choose the skeleton that you are most happy with. If you like it, then do 3 variations of that skeleton too. You can enlarge the head, shrink the legs or vice versa. Line them up.

 

If you want to, you can start to think about what muscular structure it will have later on. Will it be a heavy animal? Then it has to carry its weight on large bones. Is it a flying animal? Think about its wings. Invest yourself in the ideas of these creatures to bring them to life.

 

If you have come to an end and went through all kinds of variations - choose your favourite as a base for your creature. If you want to, you can clean up the sketch for clarity.

 

 

[For this example, I looked at deer and horses but also dogs and wolves to create this kind of skeleton]

A defined skeleton will come in handy later when you add more layers to the creature.

It's not necessary to take the time to color the bones in.

As an alternative you could also just create a clean line art like this.

To do so you can create a vector layer.

Vector layers are especially useful when you are working with lineart.

A vector layer will track your line strokes so that you can easily alter them at any point.

This is especially useful when you want to improve your line quality!

[You can click this button above your layers to create a vector layer]

With your lines and vector layer in place we can now edit certain parts of it if we wish to!

For the sake of demonstration I am going to highlight the skull by thickening the lines with the [Correct line width] tool which can be accesed over the [Filter] menu > [Correct line] >[Correct line width] or by pressing this button:

Now we can select any area that we want to thicken.

And here is the result:

As a rule of thumb you want to thicken the lines that connect different parts of the figure. For example the ends of the vertebras of the spine. Think about everything that would cast shadows and then thicken the lines there. I will come back to this later when we are putting on the flesh and skin.

Step 2: Sillhouette

In this next step we can already establish what our creature will look like to some degree!

While having our skeleton [Step 1] as our base layer we can create another layer and work on top of it when we reduce its opacity.

 

 

[To adjust the opacity we can use the slider to the right. The number shows the percentage of the layers transparency. Right now it is set to 26%]

There are many ways to create a sillhouette and I encourage you to try different ways out!

For now let's have a look at the example and see how I went on to do this.

 

In this case I knew I wanted a deer/horse like creature with some fantasy elements.

Notice how I added antlers even though they were not present in the skeleton before. This is important! You are not BOUND to the skeleton! It is helpful as a guideline but do not be too strict with it!

 

Be loose and make out a background story for your creature. This will help you to make out certain features of it! Where does it live? What are its attributes for?

 

My creature may live in a fantastic forest as the protector of the animals. Maybe it has to keep its antlers high to symbolise its strength. Maybe it uses its whiskers to sense danger, feel the way the wind flows, ect. Or maybe this creature lives in a completely different environment.

 

I want you to think about these kind of things. Why does your creature have that feature. What is its purpose? What is it being used for?

 

Make out the key elements of your creature. What makes someone recognize it?

In this case it might be the fluffy fur and long antlers.

 

Improve on these features!

 

What is the character of the creature?

Is it a mythical creature? Elegant, mysterious and proud? Or is it a goofy creature? A cute creature? Think about shapes when you do sillhouettes, For a dynamic and pleasing image you want to have a good balance between straights and rounds. Keep in mind that a cute character for example will probaby have more round shapes than triangles, ect. Think about how different shapes make you feel and if that feeling suits your creature.

 

If you have an idea you may want to use a hard airbrush with 100% opacity and the eraser tool to create your shapes. Keep in mind that you can be a little loose at this process. We will come back later to refine the shape.

Let's have a look at a bad creature design before we move on to see what we can learn from it.

This used to be one of the very early stages of this creature. I am showing you this because I feel like this brings across the importance of sillhouettes at this point.

 

In this example I jumped straight to the sketching part of the process. [Which can be fine to get some ideas]. The result is an uninteresting creature with repetition in its structure and shapes.

 

Now let's have a look at its sillhouette.

Now we can tell that this creature stands awkward without looking at any features.

What happened here is that the body volume does not fit its skeleton.

Notice how I strictly followed the skeleton in the sketch. There is no space for muscles, blood, skin, fur and fat.

Furthermore there is nothing that makes this creature special. No key elements [except the whiskers]. The goal is to make the creature believable but also to make it look unique and interesting.

Step 3: Sketch

Now that your silhouette is somewhat established, we can finally put down some body parts and features!

 

While we still have the skeleton as a base and the silhouette on top of it, we can precisely sketch out how we want the creature to look.

For this, I used a new layer to sketch out some lines. Again, I am not thinking about line weight or anything at this point. I just want to see if the silhouette works out and harmonises with the skeleton and the sketch.

 

At no point of the creation are you bound to anything! The skeleton and silhouette should help you as a vague guideline. If you have new sparkling ideas in your creative process, then sketch them out! This process is all about refining. Do not be satisfied with just one way your creature can look. There are probably hundreds of ways my creature could look better in this example. So why not explore them?

 

This takes us up to...

Step 4: Refining

Refine your creature! Clean it up and edit it again!

 

After you have created your first sketch of its body, you may want to clean up all the mess.

Once again - turn down the opacity of the sketch layer and the silhouette. Create a new vector layer and put down the details.

In this example, I refined the way the fur "flows", added details to the head, antlers and tail and grounded my creature. For this step, it is time to really get behind the details.

 

If you only need line art of your creature, here is a quick tip: Try to emphasize the skin that is close to the skeleton. The back, hooves, head, etc. Increase the line weight on these parts and your piece will already look a little bit more fluid. Do the same with parts of the creature that cast a shadow or overlap (like the antlers).

Check everything with the silhouette. If you need to change things then feel free to do it here. In this case, I changed the fur again, trying to get rid of boring repetition.

Step 5: Values

With your final silhouette in place, you can now go ahead and color in some values by creating a clipping mask.

 

 

reate a new layer and set it to a clipping mask by clicking on this icon above the new layer icon.

This will allow you to paint only inside the borders of your silhouette!

 

I am using a hard brush again since I am following a more cel-shaded kind of look right now.

I am using a hard brush again since I am following a more cel-shaded kind of look right now.

I want you to compare different body parts with each other. Is this part of the creature lighter than that? Is the fur underneath light or dark? What about the details?

If you don't know yet, experiment! Make different kinds of colorings! In the end, it is all about your preferences.

Keep in mind, that you could already work in colors if you wanted to. These grayscale values have the sole purpose of creating the right mood and proper foundation for your final artwork.

Step 6: Final Touches

At this step, we have come to the point where we have established a base skeleton, built upon that by establishing muscles, hair, fur, etc. and decided the values of the creature.

 

Along the way, I have not yet mentioned that I got rid of my lineart right after polishing it. That is just my personal preference and should not affect your workflow in any way. Depending on the style you are going for, you may not need linework after a certain point, whereas other styles rely heavily on it.

 

Though in the end I did come back to it.

and an alternative version:

So at this point, your creature should be fleshed out and ready to be taken to coloring!

 

But this is everything that I wanted to cover in this tutorial. Coming up with a solid foundation you can keep improving on. Putting you in the mindset of a concept artist.

 

If I wanted you to take one thing from this tutorial, then it is the refining of ideas.

Don't be satisfied with just one outcome. Explore ideas and get excited! Invest yourself in the creature you are creating and bring it to life.

 

 

 

Thank you so much for reading and I hope I could teach you a thing or two!

 

If you like to then you can check out some more stuff of me here!

 

 

• Bludes