More Thumbnails

This week I revisited my technique for environment thumbnails and experimented with the setting and how colours affected the mood. As I had already done several for a swampy forest setting, I moved onto volcanic terrain, and a more arctic area.

Volcano - tested mercury pool, sulphur river, smog.

Little wilder - silhouetted, heather-strewn area, vivid auroras.

Settled on heather theme, tested colours of auroras.

More feeling of heat/smog. Volcanic activity added. Preferred this setting.

Snow - looks windswept.

Warmer aurora colours/sunrise. Looks mystical.

Much more barren and icy, green and ominous. Preferred this setting.

I also sketched some creature designs. At the moment I am favouring five main designs, though I am not confining myself to them in case something else sparks interest.

• I kept the idea of a serpentine dragon as the top creature, though it might become more of a guardian than an apex predator; with a lot of volcanic activity, a rare guardian forest spirit creature that devours fire would be essential to survival. 
• For predators, I have a crocodilian that swims in liquid mercury without harm, and will have another creature that utilises sulphur in some way. 
• The more passive creatures have become linked with greenery; one creature runs the land and reseeds as it goes, and another more deer-like animal will have fern-like horns.

Head shapes for the serpent dragon. The top one is most appealing to me. 

Looking for interesting body shapes/locomotion within small designs. Creature inspiration ranges from buffalo to whip spiders, greyhounds to ibis. Aimed for mangrove swamp habitat.

Arid, volcanic habitat. Creature that drinks mercury (has an immunity to it) and uses it as a weapon. The top sketches are deciding how it would drink (i.e. like an antelope or a cat). Decided it would dip its neck - silhouettes try to find a workable shape. Low-slung, stocky crocodilian seemed most viable.

Worked more on the crocodile idea. Deciding between something unusually fast that could run down its prey (at least enough to inject it with poison), or a slower ambush predator. Its tail is mildly prehensile and can support its body weight easily. Potentially it senses movement as the almost mask-like head I am favouring would leave little room for eyes.

Hasty sketches to figure out major creatures and how they compared body-wise. The five I prefer (1, 2, 4, 6 and 8) seem sufficiently unique to continue with. A winged creature might round out the group if I have time.

[literature]

Hyperbole Games is something I found out about through one of their recent Kickstarter campaigns, and a follow-up email led me to this blog post by Grant Rodiek, which is about world-building for a card game. He uses Netrunner and Magic: the Gathering as examples, and it's a very interesting insight into the thought behind successful games, with fitting creatures and mechanics. He says that everything should be accessible, and players should know that for instance, creatures from the forest are stealthy, in comparison to resilient creatures of the desert. Applied to my project, I need to make sure all of my creatures fit their environment build-wise and colour-wise, and that their place in the food chain is visible immediately.

"Worldbuilding should reinforce the expectations of the mechanisms where possible."