My goal with this exercise was to create an entirely new creature without any relationship to fantasy or science fiction creatures I’ve been exposed to, but based off of real world animals. The goal is to give myself parameters to work within to practice client-based work. When working with clients on any creative project, you’ll find that the amount of control they will assert can vary a great deal not only from client to client, but from project to project. It’s important to be able to think creatively while still working within parameters. In this case, I decided it was for a video game where you play one of two societies of these creatures I’m creating. One of them will be a tribal society and one will be closer to a knights and armor agrarian society. I decided that I wanted the environment to be the border of an evergreen forest and a savanna plane with a major river or lake separating the two climates. At this point I haven’t started thinking about the creature at all, just the situation I’m designing it for.
After some sketching and researching animals who live in these climates, I decided to base my creature’s skeleton on that of an otter. I adjusted the pelvic bone a little to move him into a more natural upright position without losing the feeling that he would still be natural moving as a quadruped. I imagine it would be very engaging to see them fighting each other, so my goal was to make them seem comfortable moving in either position.
I also start working out the creature’s evolution. The earliest recognizable form of this creature would be a carnivore that lived entirely underwater and would run its two mouth tentacles along a river bed (perhaps the very river separating the two climates) looking for small critters eating algae. As it developed, the tentacles started to be used to shuttle small fish into it’s mouth and it started living part of its life on the land and moving towards being an omnivore, collecting nuts from the shore. The next step of evolution led to it becoming more alligator-like in its hunting style, leaping from the water to capture small animals drinking on the shore with it’s tentacles.This is where we reach a major evolutionary step. At this point their intelligence starts to develop. As their numbers grow and they develop more complicated family structures, small animals are no longer enough to support them so they start using tools and working in teams to hunt larger animals. You can see this method of hunting still used in the “modern” tribal society and the weapons in this world I’ve created reflect this, swords curved like hooks to grab animals from shore and drag them into the water.
On the right, Females are distinguishable because of the pink red at the tips of their ears.
I used color and texture similar to that of alligators and crocodiles because that camouflage would make sense for their development. I made a browner version for the tribal savanna versions and a greener version for the forest ones. I also do a third color palette based off salt water crocodiles, imagining that this could be a third society that developed where the river meets the sea and could be used as an expansion to the original game.
Finally, I have some simplification sketches for working out poses and ways to quickly lay out ideas like an attack from the water. I will probably continue this exercise at a later date, I hope you’ll check it out even though this is just an exercise at the moment!
