After generating a number of creatures, I chose 3 of them to take on into designing:
Creature 1:
- Animal
- Mammal/Reptile - Amphibian
- Native
- Mutant
- Aggressive
- Fantasy
- Horror
Creature 2:
- Humanoid
- Avian/Fish - Sealife
- Invader
- Mutant
- Aggressive
- Alternate Reality
- Adventure
Creature 3:
- Animal
- Mammal/Fish - Sealife
- Native
- Monster
- Docile
- Fantasy
- Documentary
From these briefs, I have blocked out silhouettes for each.
Creature 1:
Creature 2:
Creature 3:
From all these silhouettes, I have chosen the following 9 as potentials:
And from these 9 silhouettes, I have chosen 3 with which to do more in depth research on: top middle; top right; bottom right.
For top middle I will be looking at both sloths and komodo dragons.
For top right I will be looking at gorillas and crocodiles/alligators.
For bottom right I will be looking at whales and hippopotamus.
Moodboards were then produced for each creature using images taken from Google searches:
Creature 1:
Creature 2:
Creature 3:
With good reference imagery, I can now go on to produce sketched ideas for the creatures and, hopefully, have one that stands out to me as something I'd want to go with. I find creating moodboards like those above to be very useful when it comes to using reference, as they mean that I have all the images I need in one place and I can focus on certain ones, or the piece as a whole. Saves a lot of time compared to flicking through several images and losing concentration.
Creatures 1 and 2:
Creature 3:
After a bit of debate, I have decided to go with Creature 2, hence-forth dubbed Crocorilla. I think it will be an interesting challenge to animate a gorilla-like creature, as I find the way they walk both fascinating and appealing. To further the design of the Crocorilla, I see it as a sort of Yeti, Abominable Snowman or Big Foot figure, and so I found 2 good examples of those sort of creatures from different media:
The top image is taken from the computer game 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim', whilst the bottom image is from the film 'The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.'
With this extra reference point and using my initial design, I have gone on to refine the Crocorilla and so it now looks like this:
I also took this image into photoshop to render it with some colour, creating a more finished piece, as well as a quick piece to see how the creature would look in the final animation, knowing that I won't be able to render it up to the same quality as the first image. I also had in mind that I wanted it to be an albino creature, similar to most Yeti designs, but also to symbolise the rarity of the creature:
Detailed render:
Quick Render:
At this point, I am pleased with the progress of the design of the Crocorilla, though I am sure that as I work further on with the project, I shall refine details and get it to exactly the way I want it, without trying to force the design just now. I also feel that it is important to start the animation process now, as it is a long one and will require quite a lot of referencing footage of live gorillas and crocodiles/alligators in order to get the Crocorilla to move convincingly, as well as test animations.
That is all on the front of concepting the Crocorilla, as I will now move on to animating it, which I shall document in the next post.
