Head over to CA.org and do the COW (Creature of the week). The themes are good and make you think outside the box. Latest brief: ROUND#192, Costume Creature In celebration of halloween, this round will focus on a creature who disguises itself by wearing a costume of sorts. What do I mean by costume? I mean a beastie…
Hey all. I'm looking for some tips on character design; coming up with good character concepts, especially creatures (non-human). I'm attempting to build a character based portfolio and I'd quite like to be able to see myself as a complete character artist as oppose to just ripping off existing concepts. I appreciate that…
Thanks a lot Ferg, great tip. I see what you mean too, building a mental archive to pull ideas from seems sensible. I just had a thought too. Presumably most characters have at least some sort of basis in an existing creature. Even if it's just minute detail, for example, slightly dog-like features, or the ears of a bat…
helps to establish what kind of environment this person/creature will be living in and what day to day things it may encounter and what it might eat/collect/use as weapons
http://www.autodestruct.com/thumbwar.htm Honestly the best thing you can do when starting a design is to thumbnail. Link found in the wiki. It's something i do a lot in both graphic design and illustration, and really helps a lot, helps get initial ideas down on paper and to find something that works. Also as ferg said, do…
Great topic :) thanks for starting this. I was also struggling with this. I agree with everything said so far. What helped me a lot also was looking at animal anatomy books :) just for ideas. I also loved all of Neville Page tutorials I saw so far. He does goes in detail of how to sculpt them or draw but the most important…