On our first day back at college, we were thrust straight into a new project. Because of the recently renewed 'Dark Crystal', we're designing fantasy creatures like the ones in the new Netflix show.
The new series, 'The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance,' is a fantasy show starring fantastically designed puppets and a bit of VFX. It's an epic fantasy adventure on the planet, Thra, where a group of Gelfling (an elf-like species) fight to stop the evil forces that now control the life force of their home. Because of the organically designed creatures and characters, we went outside onto the college campus to find real life inspiration. I spent nearly two hours drawing plants.
I had a lot of fun doing all these sketches. I used a technique called scumbling, which is when the shading is non-directional and smooth, and the lines are gentler. I struggled with this technique at first, but by the end of the exercise I'd gotten the hang of it. Brian Froud, who did the concept art for the Dark Crystal, used this technique in his art work. It's an easy way to describe depth and not use too many lines.
I think I captured the daintiness and ruggedness of the plants well, since most plants are imperfect. I'm particularly proud of the tree I drew in the bottom left corner. It was a lot of fun to draw in the texture of the bark. I had another go at drawing bark from a closer distance, but I didn't have much luck.
I then went onto trying to draw some creatures inspired by the things I drew. I found a lot more hard, as I didn't have many ideas or much experience drawing in this way. I decided to try and amalgamate different elements of different plants into a creature. The first one I did was with the idea to make an ominous looking monster, maybe one that can't move, or disguises as a tree to trick its victims.
Another one that was fun to draw was the 'forest sprite' at the top of the page. I Had a lot of fun with this, as I decided to try and create the clothing of the creature as well. It was interesting to imagine what it might wear, and how they would wear it.
I tried to turn a leaf into a person, but it didn't turn out how I had hoped. This was my least favourite sketch because of the simplicity. The final one I drew was my favourite. I took advantage of the amount of flowers I had seen over the summer, and tried to create a creature inspired by them. I came up with a hedgehog-like creature with petals for quills, and tougher areas of skin.
I lined it in photoshop, making sure to get the textures drawn in. For the tougher areas of the skin, I tried to get a tree-bark look, taking inspiration from oak and pine trees. A good way to keep all of these ideas together was to create an easy and simple moodboard. To do this, I used a free website to get a load of images together quickly.
This was what mine ended up looking like. I made sure to have a lot of different flower petals and all my sketches I made there. I added some pictures I took myself to give a variety of what I could use. I even used an image from a flower show earlier in the summer.
It was a lot of fun to put this together, and was a really easy way to have everything in the same place. I'll definitely be using it again for other projects this year.
The textures I went with were a rough, oak bark, a pink petal and an amphibians skin. I went with frog's skin because it struck me as the most natural texture for a creature like this. It also was good colour-wise, as didn't contrast with the tree bark too much.
I wasn't able to figure out how to paint with certain textures, so I moved the images over the outline, rasterized the layers, then erased all the parts that I didn't need. This wasn't a hard process, and didn't take too long. All that was left to do was combine the two shading aspects, lower the opacity and edit the layer to the 'multiply' effect, which means the shadows will match the colours of the textures underneath.
I wasn't convinced by the shading, so I added a new layer, and added some highlights to the various textures where the light would be hitting it. I made sure to use a low opacity on the petals, as they didn't look completely right. I also added a few tints to her cheek, shoulder and arm, as frogs have slimy, shiny skin.
The finished picture came out like this, and I'm impressed at how it turned out. I'm disappointed I wasn't able to paint with the textures, but I found a way to work around the issue. The shading could've been less harsh, but I like the effect of it.
If I were to do this again, I would try out different brushes in Photoshop to make the shading more delicate, and more textured.
I even drew a few more versions of the creature, trying to give it a different character. I tried out various different things, and even tried out a few emotions. I thought it was important to show how this character would show emotion, as it's hard to express them in a drawing without eyebrows.
Eventually, the character became a lot more cheeky, as opposed to being serene and calm. She became an enthusiastic, cheeky, and ditzy looking character, who'd probably end up causing trouble in whatever universe she happened to reside in. It was a lot of fun try and convey her emotions through her eyes. I realised that the bark on her forehead could be manipulated, thick at her nose to convey anger, and hugging to her outer apexes to show sadness. I also decided that having her petals move to show her feelings was interesting, and would make it easy to show what she was feeling.
This project was a lot of fun, and showed me a lot of ways to find inspiration, and how to use textures to inspire characters. I found scumbling very useful, as it taught me a new way to describe shadows and tonal difference in a drawing, as it's less harsh than the strict comic style shading I'm used to doing.
I have also become more confident in using Photoshop during this project, and have begun to use more of the features available. I enjoyed going outside to find inspiration for designs, as most of my inspiration comes from a quick google search, so it was interesting to do things another way. If I ever need to design another creature or character like this, I will definitely go outside before I go on a computer.