For my Year 2 Induction Project I was tasked to create a creature from the land of Thra inspired by the film 'The Dark Crystal' using the natural environment as a base reference and implement it into a model sheet. My inspiration came from the art of Brian Froud his works incorporate a wide range of creative character designs whether it be mystical looking fairies of faces on trees and leaves.
I went around the College grounds to both take pictures of and sketch ideas I thought would make for nice inspiration when making my own creature later on. I made sure I incorporated many different ideas concerning what this creature could be when choosing be, my ideas including abstract objects like rocks and sunflowers along with a variety of different looking plants. At the end of the day I wanted to ensure I had a wide range of ideas I could pick and choose from once I went and researched more about The Dark Crystal. Before that however I collected reference images of Brian's work.
After having collected pictures and sketched a variety of plants and other similar things from the college grounds I decided I wanted to build upon my reference gallery so I went to a local farm to take pictures of the many animals I thought would be nice to interpret into the style of Brian Froud. The sketches include a rabbit, sunflower, sycamore seed, twig and a few more flowers. One of which looked like it had small cupcakes growing out of it so that was an initial idea of my own.
I now had a variety of reference images so I started to consider what creature I could make. One of the things I had scouted which I thought had a lot of potential to become a wide mass of thing was rocks and stones. The next stages would include linework sketches, implementing various textures and then adding light and shade onto them. To make this easier for myself I had to consider materials which would show an influence of light really well so I chose to use polished granite. I also decided to go with a crab like creature because the
project meant I already had experience with making this particular animal do things so I could transfer that experience on. In the meantime I had also experimented with a snail with a closed rosebud for a shell but I decided a crab would work better for the above reasons.
In order to make sure I knew what I was doing I went and collected some more reference of polished granite so I knew how much light and shade was necessary to apply.
As well as this I needed to consider the fact that smooth granite is the production of our influence and that natural granite may not be so similar in terms of how it interacts with light so I also created a reference collection for rough and irregular granite samples.
Once I had all the reference I needed I scanned and put my crab creature sketch into Adobe Photoshop. Once it was inside Photoshop I used a downloaded brush pack brush to draw out the creature. I did however change it in areas such as the claws in order to help make it look more like a crab. I did also need it to resemble something that could be associated with the dark crystal so I gave it multiple eyes and tusks along with a row of teeth. Following those ideas I saw that it made it look somewhat like a spider so I decided to follow along with that and make the granite colours fit that idea.
After doing the line work I had no need to use the background so I removed it.
I now needed to gather different types of granite to put onto the drawing so I got a black one and two shades of grey. I decided that the main body would be rough and the arms/legs would be a lot more smooth so they'd have more light reflection present once I got to that stage. To texture using the samples bellow the drawing I had to use a new tool I hadn't before called the 'clone stamp' tool. The premise of the tool is to be able to center a target position and replicate it to another place, allowing for the transition of any texture such as mine to anywhere I like.
Through the texturing process I added a tusk texture to put onto the teeth and fangs on the side. The clone stamp did a good job of allowing me to texture the drawing alongside it looking properly done without any areas where it looks copy and pasted for instance. Aside from that I added a dot onto the top left to create a light source. This would allow me to properly adjust where my shading and lighting would be going.
It took me a while to get used to doing shading and lighting because I hadn't had much practice with it before.The lighting on the legs and claws would be more apparent because they were supposed to be smoother and more shiny.
Once finished with the shading and lighting I went and reduced the opacity of the shaded areas because I felt it was too intense. I liked the lighting and kept it as it was but wanted to enhance it so I implemented streak lighting to make it seem more glossy. There are many layer effects which can be used to help enhance your shading but I think 'Multiply' works best for shading and 'Overlay' works best for lighting.
After looking over it for a while I didn't like the eyes because they weren't correctly in perspective to where they were supposed to be on the body (top of the body, not facing towards the viewer) so I created a demonstration as to why it work better as they are now I've changed it. As you can see circle eyes should be ovular if they're at the angle I'm trying to portray them to be at.
Here are the eyes at their new angles. I also gave them brown colouring to help differentiate them from the grey outsides.
Lastly I put a black background behind the creature to help me see the outside outlines so it would be easier to clean them up.
Here are my layers. I made sure I correctly organised them so I and other people would know what is what. Layers are also important in ensuring that you can go back and make changes to individual parts of the drawing without ruining anything else.
This is the final drawing. I like this drawing because it's the first time I've experimented with shading and light spots and ended with a decently looking outcome. I will definitely use the same techniques going forward to create my own concept pieces when it comes to team projects later on. If I were to change it I'd definitely try adapt and do something that Brian Froud might see more fitting for The Dark Crystal such as a humanoid creature like many of his works.
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