uhhh hey there, demanding stranger

I’d like to first preface this response by arguing that I am not the best-at-creatures person I know. I would, in fact, argue that I have at LEAST two very good close friends who are considerably better at creatures that I am, but to digress, I think that the notes I made on this have some relevance to why those people are good at creatures.

My second preface is that I am good at creatures because I love animals and nature a heck of a lot, and I stuff them into every crevice of my work. I do this via Research, and A Lot Of It. The only way to get real good at anything is to put time and effort into learning about what you wanna get good at and then applying this knowledge as you work. This is a continuous process, do it for every single step and it helps you improve way faster than jumping into the drawing process and hoping for the best!

Therefore, for everything I say from here on out, assume that every decision I make is backed up by 10+ years worth of research into animals, mythology, and the artistic and design processes. Buckle in, I’m gonna be sayin’ a lot. And you can bet your britches it’s gonna be convoluted!

Let’s do this by deconstructing my fondest design; One (1) Very Good Boy.

Have an idea of what you want when you start, and inform this idea by considering what you want to evoke in anyone who sees your drawing. You should think about where your creature lives, where they are in the food chain, what they themselves eat, how big they are, what their personality is, how intelligent they are, (do they procreate? how?) and then think about how you translate this information (or whether you don’t) visually to a viewer.

(In this process, Jess essentially recreates this drawing)

Base them on animals you like - Scrap is a dragon, and I’ve taken inspiration from lizards, dogs, bears, birds and bats (and any and all dragon mythology I could get my grubby little 12-year-old hands on) to inform how he’s put together. To answer my own questions from the paragraph above, Scrap;

- is built to live in a temperate forest
- he’s top of the foodchain, and eats large herbivores but can also tackle carnivores (though Scrap as a character will eat almost anything), because…
- he’s a dragon and he’s dang large!! I usually place him at about 12 feet tall
- his personality is equal conflicting parts lazy and curious; he’s protective and charming, a cross between a big dog and a little brother
- his intelligence, also; a cross between a big dog and a little brother… smarter than a dog but more animalistic than a human, or what one might expect of a dragon
(- he can procreate, but I won’t say any more than it’s based on a lizard)

Scrap is more than this finite list, but it’s a good place to begin!

Start by breaking down your creature into simple shapes. I like to start very gestural, I think it keeps my work fluid and animated. Use a line of action to determine the direction everything’s going in, and base your structure very simply around this.

Simple shape language is helpful at this stage - squares are sturdy and stoic and have a lot of weight, triangles are pointy and driven (often used for villains, but also protagonists). Circles remind us of babies - they evoke connotations of innocence, and trustworthiness. I want people to like Scrap, so he’s mostly circles.

Next we flesh him out a bit, quite literally! 3D volumes’ time to shine!

Base your creature’s musculature on the anatomy of the animals you’re drawing inspiration from *even if it doesn’t exist, having a basic awareness of how various bodies are put together will help make them as believable as possible (disclaimer, I didn’t reference these muscles up there, Don’t Be Me, use reference please).

Make sure you look at what’s under their skin too. Think about where your creature’s joints go, what your creature feels like to touch, what’s bony and what’s soft. Above, Scrap’s teeth and muzzle are based on a dog (opportunistic omnivores, like Scrap!), his neck and cheeks are based on large lizards like water dragons and iguanas, and his paws draw loose inspiration from bears (can grab, and quite expressive, but rather clumsy!).

Keep thinking about why you’re making your design decisions and what effect they have. Treat colour distribution the same way we treated detail in the previous stage; use it to draw the eye to areas of interest, and doing this according to some laws of nature (and colour theory) is extra tasty. Scrap is green (associated with nature, more warm than cold in temperature and approachability, but still reptilian - and also I like green), and as a creature with the ability of flight, he follows the colouration of birds - he’s dark on top and light on the bottom, which makes him hard to see from both above and below! Additionally, the dapples on his hide (like the downy spots of a lot of young animals) make him hard to see under the speckled god-rays of a forest canopy when he’s on the ground.

As for his *eyes, I wanted Scrap to be both empathetic and expressive and easy to read emotionally (hence the roundness), but I also want him, and dragons as a whole, to feel alien and foreign and mysterious (hence the slit reptilian pupil). The contradiction adds to this mystery and draws questions from a viewer - is he deceiving us with his contradictory appearance? Is his personality at odds with his base nature?

Sometimes it’s fun if we don’t know. Scrap might be a Good Boy, but he’s also a huge, dangerous animal, as evidenced by;

In my own personal lore, magic affects natural processes more than it does anything else, so breathing fire reflects this best not if it’s fun and sparkly, but if it’s visceral and organic.

I don’t know that I have a good conclusion, so I’ll leave you with some of my favourite resources;

- I first properly learned to draw dragons via these books by Jessica Peffer
- This issue of Imagine FX has been my anatomy lifesaver, and continues to be
- Anything by Griz and Norm
- Anything by the Etherington Brothers
- Real life!!!

If you have any questions, please throw them at me and I’ll do my best to have some kind of answer. From here on out, it just takes research and practice!!! Keep trying! Learn more! You can do it! I believe in you!