Creature Design - Church Cat and DmC

[Mass update from over Christmas (broken into sections). I now have a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet which I am still learning to use properly, but it is much better for brushes as it can recognise the tilt of the pen.]

Creature Design #2

Overview

I wanted my creature design to add something new to Bloodborne, whilst keeping within the unwritten game rules/lore. The idea was a cat-like creature forcibly made by the Church, the highest authority in the game. Church enemies have mask-like faces, heavy robes, and vary in size and weaponry.

The design process used was based on concept art in the DmC: Devil May Cry artbook. Creatures like the Hunter, and Rage, had sketches that showed their whole bodies, and then sketches specifically for working out the design of each creature's face. It seemed interesting to do, as each headshot gave a different feel to the creature, and faces are typically focal points on any given thing, requiring a lot of thought.

Research

• Images from the DmC artbook. I have also played the game before, so I knew how a lot of the creatures came across in-game, which of the concept art applied.
• Images of Bloodborne Church enemies, and their lore (in the Collector's Edition Guide).

Process

Initial pen sketches. The largest image was actually fairly close to the final design, as I referred to it when I felt lost in design decisions. The smaller images explore poses. 

Applicable text reads:

"Church cats - they get rid of the rats in the walls. Rarely seen. Feared. Hunters have dogs, Church have cats. Slightly like Sphynx. Crested."

 

For painting I did basic sketches, put the basic colours underneath, and then detailed on a layer over the top of both. It was a fast and effective process.

The construction lines are based on something Feng Zhu often did, figuring out perspective and making sure the image was in proportion. It's a good technique to keep the image in line and get a sense for its size with the horizon line.

Decisions had to be made about the creature's final design. The front-facing images didn't have the same sense of imperiousness I wanted the creature to display; I wanted the cat to be arrogant, an apex hunter that knew of its skill, a creature spoilt and worshipped by its creators.

The image in the coat gave a strong visual link to normal Bloodborne Church enemies, but again didn't give the right impression. Even if it attacked by being on all fours, there was no sense for it to be on its hind legs if it didn't mean something.

Thus, I chose the bottom image as a base for the final design, as I liked the idea of the spiky mane and the visible, cat-like spine. I envision it having a slow, languid pace until it spots the player, upon which it breaks into a cheetah-like run. Additionally, the side-on pose displays the change in anatomy, from human-esque to cat. The visual link to the Church enemies, instead of the cloak, is now in details; skin colour, empty black eyes, and a church bell swinging from its short tail:

Final design. Experimented with the layout - the limbs furthest away are faded, to give an instant sense of depth in the image. Also, the lighting is visible in the background, even though it's simple.

Reflection

• Working out a design with sketchy, coloured headshots gives a great sense of character, of how the creature would come across - multiple designs together show just how a small difference might tweak it better than the original plan
• Not using neat lineart, just colours, for detailing the sketches made the process a lot more fluid and changeable
• The design changed unexpectedly - reference images were needed to make the final decision, making sure the creature was unique but still linked
• Limited colour palette was useful - final creature looks strong, icy and unassailable, due to the cold colours used
• Background on final image made it appear a lot more realistic - I will keep trying new things on how to present the final layout
• Headshots are extremely useful for fleshing out a design's personality quickly, without bothering redoing the whole body

Creature Design - Yatagarasu and Feng Zhu

For each of my Bloodborne creatures I wanted to try out a different design process. I looked through all of my sketches and picked a lot of designs I felt I could take further. For each one I get to I will combine it with an artist I follow, so that I can try out their design processes. Hopefully by doing this I can find what the differences between processes do to affect the final outcome.

Quick amalgamation of preferred design ideas. I will pick a fitting creature for each artist's design process (for instance an artist whose process uses multiple headshots would require a creature design with more potential for an interesting face shape).

Creature Design #1

Overview
My first choice was the three-legged crow design I had been toying with, seen on the bottom of the above image. My initial sketches suggested it was some sort of boss, possibly blind, and that villagers sacrificed prisoners to it, presumably for good fortune. I had a loose idea of it being based on Yatagarasu, a crow creature I knew was from Japanese mythology, but I didn't know any specifics.

The artist whose design process I wanted to begin my studies with was Feng Zhu, founder of FZD School of Design. He has a series of videos on YouTube, typically an hour or more, about various topics, including creature design.

Research
For this design I used Feng Zhu's video "Design Cinema - EP 62 - Real-Time Creature Design", in which he drew three Men In Black style alien creatures, and then tidied up the lineart on the same layer. Also, he used a shade of red to draw in, instead of the typical grey/black. Another I used as guidance was "Design Cinema - EP 85 - Mythological Creatures", which features the idea of drawing for a client, and creating three initial versions that are distinct from each other - one entirely based on the client's brief, one filled with your own ideas and interpretations, and a happy medium in-between. He also explained that it's best to work with notes and images on the page as reference, to keep your mind grounded in what you're trying to achieve, and to research into creature designs to get the best understanding. This is why I chose Feng Zhu as the artist whose techniques I wanted to explore for this creature, as I knew I would have plenty to research on it.

Thus, my research on Yatagarasu and three-legged crows was fairly extensive:

Wikipedia - "three-legged crows"

• For a general overview of three-legged crows in mythology. 
• Yatagarasu ("eight-span crow") is the Japanese version, a giant jungle crow/raven embodying divine intervention and guidance. Within rituals to him is the idea of purification by fire.
• Sanzuwu ("three-legged bird"), is the Chinese version, though the names Yangwu or Jinwu ("sun/golden crow") are used for the ten crows that pulled the carriage of the sun god across the sky. They were red in colour and were blindfolded to stop them being tempted to land and eat a forbidden grass.
• Samjok-o, the Korean version, was a symbol of the sun and of power, chosen over the dragon and the phoenix.

The Legend of Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow and its possible origins

• More in-depth about Yatagarasu and the myths it appears in.
• The European tales all have black crows, linked with death, war or the underworld, whilst the Eastern myths tend to change the crow to red or yellow to better link it with the sun.
• Cherokee Indians told of the Raven Mocker, an androgynous, withered old creature that robs the dying of their life, and flies in a fiery shape, arms outstretched like wings, with sparks trailing behind and the rushing noise of a strong wind. His call is like the sound of a diving raven, an invisible force that frightens and tortures the dying.
• Northwest Indians spoke of a raven who stole fire and gave it to Earth - once the raven was white, but its feathers were stained by smoke.
• Australian Aborigines had a raven that stole fire from seven sisters, failed, and was charred in the attempt.
• Odin owned Huginn and Muninn, ravens that sought hanged men and slain bodies - sometimes they were considered valkyries in raven form.
• In Ancient Greece, ravens and crows were messengers of the sun gods, Helios and Apollo.
• In Irish myth, the Morrigan often took raven/crow form to fly over battlefields and armies, taken as an omen of impending bloodshed and fortune.
• Typically ravens were considered one of the oldest and wisest of animals.
  

Three-Legged Animals in Mythology and Folklore

• Three-legged, asymmetrical animals are highly unusual in mythology. Typically they feature two front legs and one back leg, or three legs in a row. It's much rarer to have one with one front leg.
• The Scandinavian helhest ("ghost horse") has one front leg and two back legs. It is blind, a harbinger of death, and leads people into the hereafter. It is a psychopomp, a guider of souls to the afterlife. Sleipnir (an eight-legged horse from Norse mythology) was similar, and could descend to infernal regions. (Potentially used for the warhorse planned later?)
  

Wikipedia - "Tengu" and "Tiangou"

• Yatagarasu is often equated with Karasu-Tengu ("crow tengu"), which is a giant crow-like demon. Karasu-Tengu is also similar to Garuda, a winged Buddhist creature.
• Tengu are identified by a bird's head and beak (karasu tengu), or a human physique with wings and a long nose (konoha/yamabushi tengu).
• Tengu was taken from the Chinese word Tian-Gou ("celestial dog"), which resembles a black dog/meteor, thought to eat the sun during an eclipse.
  

Process

Feng Zhu's videos said that writing notes about what you want to design, and collecting found images around the topic, all help to keep your drawings in the correct frame of mind without drifting too far. 

[All images are from Google Image searches aside from the bottom-most sketch, which is mine.]

To get a sense of what could be possible, I drew a few crows/ravens, using references for proportions and typical features.

Feng Zhu drew in red in my chosen video to follow. It was an interesting change from the previous grey/black I would normally use, and helped to avoid figuring out shadows instead of just defining the shape.

Left - two legs forward, one leg at the back. Hunched. Looked too reminiscent of a gryphon.

Right - three legs aligned. Cawing. Too stilted.

Blindfolded crows. One leg slightly forward. Hunch less exaggerated. Still seemed too unnatural.

Left - different pose of the previous two, experimenting with features.

Right - rough concept of a potential opening cutscene with this boss. Player walks into the arena with a sole tree in the centre, seemingly full of leaves. Leaves are crows, drop to the floor in a cacophony of noise, branches revealed to be bony, broken wings of giant crow, which pulls itself to its feet to begin the fight. This idea was discarded because the difference between feathers and bones felt too off, and didn't seem like it would gel into a good design.

Chosen pose/design. Blindfolded, hunched, feet planted apart for stability. Continuing with Feng Zhu's process, I tidied the line-art on the same layer rather than fading it and drawing it again on a new layer. It was much faster and gave more detail (i.e. the idea of feathers) than I am used to with line-art.

Final colours. Already knew it would be red, to avoid looking like the typical black Bloodborne crow. Potentially it rises from a lake of blood. Keeping with the theme of fire found within my research on Yatagarasu, the boss would hit a new phase at a certain amount of health left, and burn off the bandages to become more threatening, and then at another subsequent phase, it would set on fire. Probably 50% and then 30% health.

Top - moodboard/references. Used in the second image.

Left - first concept for the fire Yatagarasu.

Right - final design, using references of bird wings damaged in forest fires, and embers. The pose is more hunched, with raising wings, to make the bird seem more upset and threatening. I couldn't make the design work the way I wanted, but feathers with too much fire would burn entirely, and a fiery skeleton felt too otherworldly and unfitting. For a first attempt at smoldering fires I'm fairly pleased with the result.

Reflection

• Feng Zhu's design process is extremely useful and was a good exercise
• Reference images and notes on the drawing page is something I try to do, but now I will definitely keep it up as it keeps your mind grounded whilst offering inspiration
• Not drawing over the line-art neater made for a faster workflow
• Research prior to the design helps to develop ideas and inspiration, often from unexpected places
• Keeping the 'client brief' (or the main concept) in mind for one idea, and then moving through into an idea based on your own thoughts (i.e. the typical red Yatagarasu, and then the fiery one)  means that ideas don't get too out of hand, and also push the initial concept forward
  
• The art I created using this process was more researched than I would have done otherwise
• Line-art was looser and it felt much more acceptable to change elements of it on a whim than it would had I drawn a black, neat line-art over the top
• Didn't entirely uphold the idea of 'client version, midground, own version', but I did keep separate ideas in mind, and explore them (i.e. the tree-branch/bone wings)
  
• All in all, Feng Zhu's design process is definitely useful to take elements of, and the fact he has a series of design video tutorials ("Design Cinema" on YouTube) means that his tips are open to any caliber of artist

Sketch-dump

I didn't have access to my camera for a while so I couldn't update my blog with images, but now I can rectify that. I have also added my brushpen sketches to this blog post from earlier.

Bloodborne - Creature Design Mini-Project

Initial sketches, toying with a bull, fox, crow, and cat creature.

Pencil - looking at werewolves.

Pencil - exploring the idea of a human-like mimic creature, which wore the skin of another enemy and burst out when attacked. Would be much stronger than a typical version of that enemy.

Foxes. Tested the potential of having a crown-like crest of horns. Also looked at how foxes hunted, and how they might pounce on crows in-game.

Pencil - hunter wearing a wolf-skin, and a crow beak forcing its way out of a human's mouth.

Pen - werewolves, foxes, hounds, also the idea of an existing, recognisable weapon in the game being buried in the body of a strong enemy to add more depth to the world, implying another hunter fought it and lost.

Outliner pen - Yatagarasu (three-legged crow), snake ball variant with a crow host, muzzled werewolf with hunter master.

Outliner pen - werewolves, foxes, cats. Cats are burnt and ragged - potentially blind the area around them with thick smoke emanating from their bodies.

Brushpen - tested drybrush method with less ink. It gives a good sense of depth and form. Looked at horses (one saddled), Yatagarasu, and looked at some crow references.

Brushpen - playing with layout of sketches. Looked at bandages, blindfolds and trapdoor spiders.

Sepia outliner pen - trapdoor spiders studies. The ravine trapdoor spider has a curious body shape with patterning on the back - this could be utilised in the game as a face/skull of the original transformed human, or a rune that casts magic.

Pentel brushpen - crow/raven studies.

Close-up of text in prior image. Looked at Yatagarasu, Sanzuwu and Samjok-o for inspiration/behaviour for my three-legged crow.

Brushpen - human studies - copied a pose and looked at how it might become a creature. Looked more at crows (blind, or made of corpses), foxes, and the muzzled werewolf and owner.

Purple gel-pen/sepia outliner - breaking up black images with colour. 

Brushpen- three-winged crows, claw beaks and antlers. Broke into a more stylised artstyle in the middle.

Outliner pen - crow/fox hybrid. Hounds. Human hunter with face-covering mask.

Outliner pen - horses. Considering a unicorn-inspired warhorse that managed to survive in Bloodborne's bleak landscape. The wolves bled into more chimeric monsters, featuring absorbed souls screaming in their flesh. Also looked at rat chimeras and rat kings.

Pen - Chimeric crows, wolves.

Pencil - wolf made of corpses, chimeras, wolf with backwards human arms (unsettling gait?), fox in a cow skull, and a crow-headed dog Cerberus-inspired chimera.

Pencil - human with flayed arm-skin, forming wings. Crow with a ring through its skull. Wolf with no lower jaw. Crow-human hybrid.

Outliner pen (black/blue) - Wolves with snakes/horns. Considered a bear. Muzzled wolf. 

Outliner pen - hyena-inspired hound, large jaws.

Waterbrush filled with ink - Crow, several silhouettes. Much wetter than expected, hard to detail with, might be better with different ink or a dip-pen.

Brushpen (various) - silhouettes. Testing proficiency of pens more than paying attention to sketches, meaning I created a variety of odd monsters to be inspired by.

Brushpen (various) - silhouettes. Again testing pens. Decided the 'Pentel pocket brushpen for caligraphy' is excellent for blocking in silhouettes and not fussing over details.

Pencil/outliner - sketches in Natalie Hall's artstyle. She often constrains creatures to shapes, so they are bent in unnatural lines, but it was an extremely fun exercise and caused new ideas due to the constraints of the perceived box. I also added some shadows with brushpen, trying Andrew Mar's artstyle. I will attempt his artstyle more as it focuses on more complex lines with well-placed shadows, and might offer new insight into the design process.

Digital - Foxes, various poses.

Moodboard for previous sketches, early colour test on a chosen pose using Mike Corriero's colour swatch technique.

Took a creature from the pages of my sketchbook and developed its pose more than I normally would. Looking at its form, how its head looks from various angles.

Completed one pose in colour using the swatches again from earlier. Crow-headed Cerberus dog.

Picked another pose, began working on it - crow developing eyeballs around its neck.

Various digital sketches based on gathered ideas from my sketchbook. The wolf has dead/dying crows impaled on its spikes that would attack the player also.

Self-Reflection

• Tested: Mike Corriero, drybrush, ink-filled waterbrush, Natalie Hall, Andrew Mar.

• Getting more proficient with brushpens - can confidently test more artstyles with them now.
• Keep trying other artists' styles - possibly redraw a finalised creature in another artstyle to compare their overall effect.
• Try adding colour - look into Peter Han's style for brushpen and watercolour ideas.
• Use Feng Zhu's method for designing a few creatures (normal as according to design brief, more outrageous, completely own ideas).
• Do seperate headshots for a couple of creatures, like the DmC artbook's design process.

I'm going to pick out at least ten creatures from my initial designs and illustrate them digitally, and possibly redo a few in various artstyles/mediums for comparison. I will also break apart each design to explain why they are as they are (within the perceived game lore, and my own design choices), and what I've learnt from each new design process.

Update

I finished my animation for the Games Development Society, and am very happy with the result. Learning to animate in Photoshop took a while but it's a much more familiar interface than TVPaint, which I had considered using. I definitely want to look into animation more, whether run cycles or some other type of movement, to give a creature design a new edge. My character is simple but that simplicity helps the flow of the movement - I'd like to try something more complex with a creature design.

I also drew seamless backgrounds for two levels, and some obstacles. It was a useful way to test brushes on new environments (one of the levels was a futuristic city, which I have never drawn before) and learn something new, whilst continuing on with sketches for creatures from Bloodborne for my mini-project.

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters DLC

So far, this DLC has fulfilled expectations on some counts that I had picked up on, and completely thrown curve-balls in others. One of the bosses, Ludwig, is not a wolf, a hunter or an unclassified monster - he is some sort of malformed, horse-based design. I am unclear whether it is supposed to allude to him once being a hunter on horseback, or just that he has formed out of a pile of random corpses, but he has a lot of horse imagery, including a long face, blunt teeth, and dialogue that breaks off into mad, braying laughter. He still retains memories of using a great-sword, so it could be that he rode horses to slay beasts. One of the mangled feet in his design is very dog-like, also, so he could have had a pack of hunting dogs with him (if he formed from corpses), or his transformations have been influenced by his memories of hunting. All in all, he's a very grotesque design, but very interesting because of it.

Executioner variant               

A creature design I did not anticipate is a variant of a creature known as an Executioner, a heavyset humanoid that carries an executioner's axe and is unusually mobile for his size. I don't know the official name or lore yet behind the creature's transformations but it has thick tentacles growing from under its face-covering cowl, and is much stronger - one carries a cannon, and another seems to have a huge axe formed from part of a bell, judging by the sound-waves it causes.

One I did expect was hunters with dogs; doberman-like animals that actually attack other enemies, as well as the player, alongside their hunter masters. They're also much stronger than their rabid counterparts, fittingly. Another creature is a new variant of the very first boss faced in the game, the Cleric Beast. This variant is on fire, making him much stronger to face and allows players to fully appreciate his design and move-set.

The inclusion of Ludwig's more unusual, monstrous design has made me more confident in some of the ones I want to start finalising. They no longer feel too outrageous or potentially unfitting, as the DLC has added new parameters to what a design for Bloodborne could entail. I've begun to explore more complex, grotesque designs as a counterpoint to my more tame, original ideas, possibly to be used as a boss.

Thoughts on Bloodborne

For the Games Development Society, my role is to create art for the level, and also the silhouetted character's run, jump, and slide animations. This meant looking into animation, which seems like an extremely interesting topic; designing a run cycle for a creature design later might be interesting, seeing how different gaits affect how its presence comes across.

Alongside making art, I've been drawing traditionally in my sketchbook for creatures designs for Bloodborne, my current mini-project. Currently I don't know whether to design a whole new area, a Chalice Dungeon (randomised underground areas full of various monsters), or just pick areas where creatures I have designed would fit in to. However, as I am quite familiar with the game (and in possession of the official guide, in lieu of an actual artbook) I have identified a few areas I feel could have been expanded upon:

• ambush-specific enemies - there is a creature in Chalice Dungeons that consists of a glut of blood and bones, which drops from the ceiling, spiders which do the same, and in the main game there are a few creatures set to run from around corners, and some that blend into their environment. However, they are all visible if you pay attention. Thus, one of my designs will involve trapdoor spiders, which could move between several places to ambush from, so the player would be on edge near all of them. One of the best designed ambushes in the game has one enemy run to the left of the doorway as a player approaches the room, whilst another, hidden one waits at the right-hand side - another enemy that did the same, but could teleport, could also be a possibility.
• crow boss - crows in the game are unusual, crawling on the ground instead of flying. A boss with similar capabilities (maybe something the citizens sacrificed humans/beasts to) would be extremely interesting, especially since in Japanese mythology there is a crow with three legs known as Yatagarasu, which could add new insights to what the boss would be capable of.
• hunters and hunting dogs - in Namibia there are people with muzzled hyenas on the end of thick chains, treating them as dogs. Hunters in Bloodborne are often near rabid dogs, or hunting dogs (with blades strapped to them), so maybe a hunter that captured a lycanthrope and wrestled it into submission is not too far-fetched, owing to their level of skill within the game. Muzzled, the werewolf would not overwhelm the player when coupled with the hunter as well, especially when held on the chain - upon reaching a certain point of HP, the chain would snap and change the strategy of fighting dramatically.
• foxes - all the animals in Bloodborne that were not human to start with are scavengers, as the lore would have them surviving by eating the corpses of transformed humans. There are rats, dogs, pigs and crows, but no foxes, despite the area being urban. Currently, I am looking into designing foxes that fear the player, and kill any crows that the player leaves behind (a common thing, as crows are no real threat and players often have to travel across the level to get back to where they were before death). Each crow killed would empower the fox (potentially up to three kills) until it stalked and attacked the player randomly on their journey.
• cats - despite the townsfolk being extremely superstitious, warding off beast-hood with incense, and burning transformed beasts on stakes, giving a feel of old witch-hunts, there are no cats around at all. Either it is to keep the idea of wolves alone, the dogs killed them, or it is to be assumed all the cats were burned immediately in superstition (there are cat corpses in the Chalice Dungeons). Either way, a cat would offer a new, small threat - if they are indeed linked to superstition, perhaps their attack causes ill effects, rising with each consecutive hit. Or perhaps they are barely alive, crawling from bonfires in a mess of smoke, blinding the player as they approach more threatening enemies.
• horses - there are no living horses - every one is frozen or burned or starved on the ground. However, a hunter on horseback would offer a whole new challenge, and could be something to consider.
• weapons - as the beasts are winning the war, enemies with visible signs of injury would be an interesting point to notice, especially as there are several distinct weapons in the game - imagine running across an enemy with the blade of a katana buried in it, when your own character wields the same blade. My favourite idea for this involves a giant wheel weapon called Logarius' Wheel, which is a bludgeoning tool - having it buried in the skull of a boss would be an unusual feature and a possible weak-point of the enemy.
• eyes - early game, the enemies are bestial and wolf-like. Late game, in an area that studied insight in the lore (insight being represented by eyes), creatures have multiple eyes, there are more bug-like enemies, and more unrecognisable/unearthly creatures. Potentially more of the original creatures could be deformed in this way, and gain more eyes, or, as one of the early bosses shows, they could be wearing eyes to try and gain insight. Carrion crows eat the eyes of the dead first, so one dressed in eyes would be an interesting turn of events.
• rats - rats only appear in the main game in the sewers, and they feel fairly under-utilised - a rat-king (an exceedingly rare creature created by baby rats' tails getting tangled and knotted together) would be a much more threatening strong enemy/boss, made of multiple rats that could work together for more unique attacks.

Additionally, DLC for Bloodborne came out yesterday - I intend to play it through and examine the new creature designs, and see if any of my identified areas have been used within the new content - it is a fairly unique opportunity and one I intend to take full advantage of. I will also have to look up more of the lore of the game and see how the new creatures fit across the categories of the original ones.

References

Haven't updated for a while as I have been busy finding sources of research so I can write my essay. I'm currently reading "Evolving the Alien" by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, and will add any interesting/applicable quotes I find to a subsequent post.

[literature - book]
"The Skillful Huntsman" - Khang Le, Mike Yamada, Felix Yoon, Scott Robertson (Design Studio Press, 2005)
This book features three top students and their tutor developing concept art around the Brothers Grimm tale of the Skillful Huntsman. They had completely free reign with what they could create, and met each week to share ideas and give feedback on everyone's work. It features artwork from initial thumbnail concepts to coloured pieces, and each page is commented on by both the student responsible, and the tutor overlooking the project. With such free reign to work in, they found extremely interesting and unique ways to illustrate the characters, creatures and environments found within the short tale.

The fact that all of the design process is shown for each section is extremely useful for finding a good workflow - all three students used silhouettes and thumbnail sketches to gain senses of their designs, even though their mediums were different (digital, graphite and brush-pen respectively). All of them tried to be as different as possible, and not follow the usual route, and the general themes they went for were definitely unusual (i.e. a cactus forest). They blended the familiar with the unfamiliar and it seemed like an interesting design process to consider.

"Fantastical design is a juggling act between familiarity and strangeness. Make an alien character too alien and the audience won't relate to it ... most alien designs in movies have human features." (pg 32, Khang)

"It's good to explore absurd ideas because the solutions to these problems can create new and unique ideas." (pg 50, Khang)

"That's the nice thing about fantastical films. You don't really have to explain how things work, just as long as they appear consistent with the fantastical rules you set forth." (pg 52, Khang)

"An outrageous-looking machine will appear to work if there are details that the viewers recognize for their function in the contemporary world." (pg 54, Khang)

"It is interesting to observe the influence that the pose of the figure has on our interpretation of the character design. We are so conditioned to reading subtle body language that we cannot help but assign feeling to the pose of the figure and a like or dislike for the design." (pg 114, Scott)


[literature - journal]
"Monster Design and Classifier Cognition" (Larry Hong-Lin Li, Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2015) (found here) [x]
This study looks into how mythological creatures are often composites of two or more animals (i.e. a griffin is a lion and an eagle combined), and thus whether we process their overall design as an animal or as something completely unseen before. The findings suggested that in general they are considered animals, as they contain recognisable parts that we identify as familiar.

It was an interesting read; people in the study tended to view mythological creatures more as animals than as unidentifiable entities as they could recognise the animal parts within them. It would have been interesting to see just what creatures were chosen for the study, and which exactly tended to stray towards unclassified rather than animal-like.

"Monsters are imaginary or legendary creatures invented in science fictions, fantasy stories, comic books, and video games ... Some of them are so famous and appealing that they keep people intrigued."

"Designing monsters and fictional creatures is a great challenge because their unusual appearances and structures call for creativity, imagination, and inventiveness. Especially, these mythological living entities are noteworthy since they are a synthesis of common life forms on one hand, and they are newly coined objects on the other hand. What is intriguing to us is, given the two potential interpretations, how they are construed and conceptualized in human mind."

"Ward invited college students to draw aliens from other planets by imagination. They were instructed to be as imaginative as possible to design creatures. Most of their creations preserved the main features of animals found on earth. What is more, when they were required to draw creatures with feathers, they inclined to add wings and beaks."

"Human beings tended to preserve the co-occurring features of real creatures even when they were required to design a novel living object."

"Human beings evaluate fictional information using real world knowledge." 

"Fictitious creatures are encoded with reference to our understanding of real life forms."


[literature - journal]
"What Belongs in a Fictional World?" (Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Joshua Goodstein, 2009) (found here) [x]
A study trying to find out how many unwritten rules would be perceived in stories of varying fantastical natures - the closer the world was to our own, the more unwritten rules (i.e. maths, seasons) were considered to be there also, even if nothing ever alluded to them in the text.

It was interesting to discover that people add their own rules and ideas into stories and worlds despite them never being explicitly stated - within creature design, it would suggest that if the design featured something recognisable, people would link it to the animal it represented, and assume it survived the same way. For instance, if there was a tiger-like creature, and it was never explicitly stated that it breathed oxygen, and its organs were never shown, it would still be assumed that it did so, unless something within the world had already broken that rule (i.e. everything breathes nitrogen). This offers the idea that within creature designs, something familiar should be kept (a sense, a silhouette, perhaps colour) to unconsciously link the creature to the closest related animal, so the viewer gets an easy sense of it.

Monster Hunter is one of the best for viewing this: creatures like the Ludroth (an amphibious lizard) is clearly shown through colour and gait as similar to a water monitor or crocodile, so it is expected that it can swim better than it can run. The Royal Ludroth, the boss-type leader of the group, has a mane, clearly marking it as an alpha like a lion in a pride. Additionally, its silhouette is very similar to the California sealion's, restating it as excelling in water. Small details like that, even though the monsters themselves are different to things we have seen, allow players to unconsciously distinguish important facts about the monsters they are playing against. It would mean they aren't completely thrown when stumbling into a monster for the first time. They can infer ideas from its form, colour, locomotion, and try and prepare mentally without even consciously being aware of it. Bloodborne often throws curveballs with its monsters - extremely heavyset humanoids can move unsettlingly fast, just to disrupt this mindset from the player.

"Kelly and Keil (1985) found that the mythical creatures from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Grimm’s fairy tales also tended to preserve natural structures found in the real world, even though these are ostensibly fantastical tales."

"Adults use their knowledge of the real world to construct representations of fictional worlds. But how much of the real world belongs in any given fictional world? One possible answer to this question is that everything about reality is true in fiction unless it is explicitly forbidden by the text."

"This process of representing story worlds is known as the Principle of Minimal Departure (Ryan, 1980; see also Lewis, 1978; Walton, 1990), and it requires that the worlds of fictional stories be as similar to the real world as possible while still being able to support the events in the story. Although this principle seems intuitive, there are many cases in which things that are true in the real world are not true in a fictional world, even if the text does not explicitly forbid them."

"Reality forms the basis for fiction."

"As predicted, adults’ responses indicated that facts that hold true in reality generally also hold true in fiction, even in stories that are very different from reality. Having confirmed that reality forms the basis for fiction, we examined the rules that people use when importing real-world facts into a fictional world. One possibility is that fictional worlds resemble the real world as closely as possible. This hypothesis predicts that all real-world facts that are not explicitly violated in the story should be imported into the story’s fictional world."


Alongside researching, I have been continuing the idea of adding creatures to an existing game like Bloodborne. Whilst looking through screenshots of Bloodborne to get a feel for the colour palette utilised (typically grey, though the different stages of evening and night give a feeling of reflected colour from the intense shades of sky), I found a free guide by Mike Corriero that teaches how to make a custom colour palette from a selected image. It is definitely going to be a technique I try when I finalise designs enough to be coloured, as limited palettes are not something I have experience with.

Also, after replaying part of the game, I have noticed that there are a few enemies specifically hidden just to startle the player, so I might look into a creature with an ambush mechanic. In a forested area with lots of heather and shrubs, there are balls of snakes with very similar markings to their surroundings, making them unseen until practically stepped on. Perhaps a trapdoor spider in a foggy or cobwebbed area could apply a similar mechanic. Flightless crows lurking in dark corners are another - one that could suddenly fly would also be a good ambush creature.

Other ambushes used in the game are a monster bursting through the door as a player approaches/leaves, something pouncing just as they enter a room, or (and by far the best designed) one creature scuttles away in the darkness to one side of the room, causing the player to look in that direction, and a second creature pounces from the other side, unseen. As far as I know the latter is only utilised in one section of the game, so it could be applied to another monster (or one that uses the same idea but is solo, and teleports).

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.