Jungle Wolf : Early sketches and studies

Hi All,

The little guy above was an early sketch of a creature concept, I wanted to create an “Alien Jungle-wolf”. However, the silhouette of the image above is still wolf-like, and in order to achieve the ‘alien’ part of the brief, I wanted to push the design away from mammalian forms.

Creature Description: the Jungle Wolf is a cold-blooded carnivore, which lives in small packs of 5 – 10 individuals, a dominant pair and their pups. They are the most ruthless hunter in the region, taking on prey larger than themselves. They live in dense tropical jungles, and use ‘clicking’ sounds to communicate between individuals while hunting their prey.

Below are some wolf skull and facial studies I did early in the design process. As the silhouette is referencing a carnivorous quadruped, I did some sketches to improve my knowledge of this form:

I wanted the design to elicit a clear emotional response from the viewer – terror. Therefore it was decided that predatory fish should be referenced in the design, such as the piranha. Piranhas have a reputation for being dangerous and frenzied group attacks.

I really like the massive teeth of this guy and I decided to use this in the final sketch. The lack of mammalian facial features helps the design to appear alien because as humans, we instinctively look for facial features - or something familiar. So without that, I feel the creature is more terrifying from the audience’s point of view.

More to come!

Katie

Monday Animal Studies: Bull

Older sketch, but I plan to use this silhouette as the basis for a creature design soon. Unfortunatley, I can't remember what breed this guy is.

Monday Animal Studies: Armadillo Lizard

Studies of Armadillo Lizards (Cordylus cataphractus)

Found in South Africa. It will roll in to a ‘ball’ when threatened by a predator. This defensive posture protects the belly from attack. The sharp, pointed armour protects the back, head and tail.

A small segment from the BBC's series, 'Life in Cold Blood'. I highly recommend the Life series as a resource for creature design.

Quick sketch!

Quick drawing from my sketch book - animation red pencil.
Yay for quick blog filler!

Katie

Rejuvenation of the Phoenix!

Hey all,

The following images are development work for a short film I was producing called 'The Last Bird', an eco-fable set in an alternate future where the natural world as we know it today has disintegrated due to the exploding population of the human race and the cities and technology that houses them. The film was originally intended to be about the search for nature in our lives, and how we cannot truly disconnect from it.

Due to the complexity of the piece the full version wasn't made, but I did complete the keyframes for the 'dream sequence' in which the main character (a young girl) encounters 'The Phoenix'.


Above, thumbnail drawings for the phoenix character.

There is an obvious difference between the well-known phoenix myth of fire, destruction and renewal and the version I ended up producing. To achieve the loose dream-like state that the character had entered into I wanted to give the creature a 'divine' presence but still retain a surface of tangible textures (feathers as opposed to fire) so that interaction between the main character and the phoenix would work easily and logically for animation and story purposes. Therefore, the 'fire' idea was quickly abandoned to make the character more approachable and appealing to the main character and to make the interaction easier to understand and relate to from an audience perspective.


Above, one of the many versions for this creature design!

The final creature more closely resembles a Japanese or Chinese mythical bird, which has similar powers of rejuvenation to the western 'Phoenix' myth. The reason there is this union of eastern and western ideas was to allow the character to fit in with style of the film which combines iconic shapes of these two "styles".

Below is the final version of the creature design. It mixes a few different bird shapes and Eastern references.

'The Creature Lab' - It's about creature design!! Woohoo!

Hi all, this is the first post for 'The Creature Lab' which is a blog where I plan to upload tutorials, reference sheets, showcase awesome creature concept artists as well as uploading as much mutated and funky creature art as I can.

Please check back often :) there will be weekly updates but I hope to update much more regularly than that!

I've got a couple of pieces to start with this week - an armored sauropod (above), a 'thorny devil' type pterandon and finally a turtle-hunting raptor. Feel free to post comments and useful critique! I'd love your feedback :) Katie