Creature Design Styles and Inking Process

Hey everyone! I wanted to start (perhaps) a series of posts with some thoughts and tips about character design. 

I want to start off with talking generally about different kinds or types of creature design, and give some of my fave artists in those categories. K

Natural History

Wikipedia describes natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. 

In this sense, I use it to mean designing the creature with a concern for how it would realistically function inside a given habitat (thinking about where it lives, how it moves, how it feeds, mates etc.); it's constrained by what is conceivable in our universe (proportions that would allow the creature to exist with gravity, no magic, organs and features that already exist within animals on earth or something approximating that) The best example (that I know of) of an artist that specializes in this kind of creature design is Alexander Ostrowski.

This Crested Cliffdrake of his is a perfect example of a fully realized and thought-through creature design - showcasing the animals appearance, orthogonal views, close-ups, movement, differences between males and females, eggs, designs of habitat and the prey it hunts - it's so freaking cool.

Fantasy/Whimsical

This kind of design is most often inspired by mythology and has a lot less concern with realism, rather having many magical, exaggerated and whimsical elements. The style of art in which it's executed is often more cartoony as well, although not necessarily. 

Great examples of this kind of creature design are Justin Gerard and Laurel Austin.

Even though rendered in a somewhat realistic style, you can see how much more exaggerated and stylized the proportions and character of this dragon are, compared to Alex's Cliffdrake.

Here's another really great example:

Cartoony

This kind of a design is almost entirely uninterested in the realism and possibility of creatures being designed, and rather focuses on shape and character. You'll notice that as creature design moves further away from naturalistic and towards stylized, there's often a lot more character than creature.

CreatureBox and Max Grecke are good examples of cartoonish, over-exaggerated designs (although neither specialize in creature design per se)

Also, keep in mind that these are kind of like extremes or archetypes, but there is a spectum in between them that allows for mixing different types, but it's just useful being conscious of this kind of classification in case you perhaps feel stuck or overwhelmed with designing your creatures and might need some guidelines.

Hope that was useful!

God bless,

Ognjen