Wording

I'd recently been considering the wording of my project question - I knew it was to do with why certain mythological creatures have long-lasting designs (whilst others have fallen out of public knowledge) and what made them so effective - I felt like tightening the wording would make it easier to research elements of. I came up with "Why are classical creature designs more appealing than any recent creations?" or "What gives classical creature designs their long-lasting appeal, so much that new creature designs don't appear in other IPs very often?" (for instance, Tolkien's orcs are used in multiple IPs)

In the subsequent class we worked on our Learning Agreements so it was pretty good timing for thinking about my project. Working out the wording was fairly difficult, but eventually Eden and I developed a quick exercise where we had to verbally explain our work to each other without looking at the notes we had written on our Learning Agreements, and it really cut us down to the core elements of what we wanted to do.

I realised I wanted to explore creature designs from history, finding out why they are so integrated with our society to always appear in fantasy (and why some interesting creatures are never seen), and also look for correlations to see if iconic creature designs share common elements. Perhaps they're all from a certain period of history, or are linked to particular ideas and themes that strike interest (such as the werewolf representing the duality of man, the idea of an inner beast).

For this, I would be looking into the following:

• Why some classical creatures are popular, whilst others have fallen out of vogue.
• What makes a creature design iconic?
• Does the story behind the creature, or its behaviour/actions, have an impact on its popularity?
• Has the creature been written as a main character, which made it more appealing?
• Are recent creatures (in games/other media) actually unique, or accidentally recreating forgotten creatures?

I would have to research:

• Design origins of classical creatures - why they were made up, what made them stick
• Modern iconic creature designs - Alien, Monster Hunter, Pokémon, Bloodborne -  and their design inspirations
• Necessary elements to include when designing a creature - world-building, anatomy, familiarity of the design, audience, end use
• The effect of art styles, behaviour/mechanics, area of origin, lore, audience, media representation

Also, I follow a wide variety of artists on different social media (Facebook, Tumblr), and I could look into their design processes, and how their different art styles affect the feel of the creatures they design. For instance, I could look at the following (among others) :

• Terryl Whitlatch - has a foundation in scientific anatomical illustrations, can develop creatures through bone structure, muscles and the final piece
• Mike Corriero - extremely unusual and realistic looking creature designs - recently seem to be inspired by sea creatures
• Andrew Mar - brush-pen user, interesting inking style, often draws monsters
• Peter Han - brush-pen/watercolour user, very loose and dynamic

Overall I expect my project title would be summed up as "What makes a creature design iconic?", though it will probably change again with more research put into it.


Additionally, since my mini world-building project is complete, my second project is that I am developing ideas for creatures that would fit in pre-existing worlds. At the moment I am using Bloodborne, as it is the game I have most recently played and thus the world is fresh in my mind. I was going to swap games and try out other styles as well, but I am part of Steph's Games Development Society and wanted to leave a little time dedicated to that, so learning to draw in new styles might be best saved for another project later on, when I am more used to the society's demand. Also, staying within the realms of Bloodborne means I can explore further, more interesting ideas for creatures rather than creating one and moving on immediately.

Since Bloodborne is primarily people turning into either wolf-like or insect-like beasts, I decided to look at the animals first, to add something more unique - there are rabid, decaying dogs, giant boars, and flightless crows, none of which seem to suggest they were people first. All the animals are scavengers, but there are no cats - I expect, from the pyres and superstitions in the lore, that the cats were all destroyed, meaning I could potentially introduce a rare cat-like creature.

Another idea is a fox, which would be hidden near various patches of crows (perhaps randomly chosen), and if they player did not kill the crows, the fox would, and then stalk the player in a much more powerful form. I also considered some sort of mimic (though having it fit with the lore would be difficult - perhaps a mad hunter miniboss type enemy), which would disguise itself as another enemy by wearing its skin, though it would have more health and stronger forms of the same attacks. A phase two mode (80%, 50% or 30% health) would be the mimic throwing off the skin and revealing its true form, with a wholly different attack pattern.