11: Researching and Planning Design

I have been watching a lot of lectures on creature and character design to get an insight of the methods that professionals use when trying to design a character. In designing creatures there is some very useful advice that I have picked up from artists. In designing the rock grubber creature pictured below. Jerad S Marantz stresses the importance of designing the creatures head, stating that "the head is the payoff" and that you can design the whole creature based off of its head. As almost every design makes use of repeating elements and patterns. As humans we are genetically programmed to focus on faces, this is the reason a creatures face is so important, its the focal point for a design.

Another technique he recommends is working in "thirds" that is when designing a creature that is based off of pre-existing animals, you end up at a more interesting place if you mix elements of three different creatures. Its somewhat similar to the rule of thirds and it strikes a nice balance between variation and making the design easy to read.

He also stresses the importance of how your creature would fit into the world "how large is your creature? What is its relationship to gravity." He gives the example of a dust mite, that - when scaled up - would not be able to support its own weight.  It is an important thing to consider, as evolution is the adaptation of creatures to their surroundings in order to survive, this makes considering the surroundings a very important part of design.