Character Workshop: Creatures

Tuesday's maya workshop revolved around creature design, I have some basic sketches down as notes of some of the more general limb positions. But what was really exiting about this workshop was that after a discussion on how fantastical creatures have evolved to be more believable as human imagination improved with the centuries, we were given three completely random animals that we had to make a convincing hybrid monster out of.

My pick of the hat was "eagle", "T. rex" and "goat". So my first idea was mostly a T. rex with giant wings. Adding the goat was a little more difficult.

  I got the suggestion that I could use horns and I think that really worked. I ended up creating some kind of apex killer of the mountains that would probably be best ot run for your life from before it sees you.

  The second part of the workshop was about fitting an animal into an environment. I was given desert, so to contrast eagle-ram rex above I decided to go the other direction, inspired by sesert mice and fennec foxes.

  While it is cute, the workshop's aim was something fantastical. So I capitalised on how I didn't really give the cute little shrew a mouth and give it an openable neck for serious biting, Thing-style. Still tiny, but it would deceive humans who saw it and get lulled into stroking it. Its cuteness could also be used to disguise itself in nests of something bigger, pretending ot be a baby.

  So a suggestion to make it more distinct created a nightmare-spawned piece of work that disguised itself as something you wanted to snuggle so it could ruin your day. A fun workshop indeed.