How to Improve Your Creature Design Drawings - Step by Step

In this lesson you will learn the importance of creating studies from the spine of various animals. These can teach you so much about creatures and the way the bodies posture and move. From here adding the limbs becomes much easier to envision.

In this lesson you will learn the importance of creating quick thumbnail sketches. This will allow you to get many ideas down on the page very quickly and open the door for creative thinking. You will work though 11 examples of various creature designs with me in this lesson.

In this lesson you will learn how to construct a variety of heads for your creatures. We will discuss the differences that can be conveyed when drawing the various head shapes. Which ones are prey and which are predators can be quickly associated with the look of the creatures head.

The brush pack is also attached to this lecture. ( For students using Manga Studio 5 / Clip Studio Paint. )

I have also included a basic Photoshop brush set in an .ABR file.  You must first unzip the file then upload them into the "Brush Preset Manager."

In this lesson you will learn how to create variations in your creature designs by comparison of the previous sketches. This exercise will help you to break the habit of drawing the same type of creatures over and over again.

In this lesson you will learn how to create studies from existing animals and slightly alter them to create more imaginative concepts. This is really the basis of creature design and this exercise will help you to gain inspiration from reference when you need it.

In this lesson you will work with me through some examples of imaginative drawing. We will draw 6 different limbs of combined concepts. Each will have animal traits of at least 2 other lifeforms. This is where the fun comes in and these types of studies are great for your progression. 

In this lesson you will work through a creature design with me. We will then create an additional drawing of the same creature but with very different proportions. This helps you to understand why proportions are so powerful with your creature concepts and how they can impact your design.

In this lesson you will learn how to implement what we have studied so far. You will work along with me as we pull from a script to create a creature design. This is very important to do if you want to work with clients. We will first start by creating some rough thumbnails and talk about the process.

In this lesson we will continue to work on an additional thumbnail. We will then make a decision on what we like and what we don't. Then we will start to clean up our concept.

In this lesson we will refine our drawing by cleaning up the lines. This will get it ready to be presented to the client or to be displayed in our portfolio.

In this lesson, you will learn how to draw a cute non threatening creature design to start the process. The art file is also attached to this lesson for you to study along with.

In this lesson, you will learn how to modify the concept to make the creature look more threatening.

In this lesson, we will continue to detail the 2nd stage of our creature design.

In this lesson, you will learn how to take the concept even further. We will discuss ways to make the creature concept look more ferocious.

In this lesson, we will add more details to the 3rd stage of our creature design.

In this lesson, we will continue to detail our 3rd stage of the creature design.

In this final lesson of this section I will tighten up the work. This is often referred to as rendering. In this lesson I also give you an assignment to practice what you have learned!

The focus of this section is to help you understand rendering and texturing with line art.  I have attached the art files to this lesson.  Let me know if you have any questions and best of luck with your studies!