Hey all! ^_^ I was just thinking about doing a painting of a pretty monster this weekend, and I wondered, do you guys have any favorite source animals that you like to mix and match to make your monsters from? Do you have any monsters that you''ve previously made that you''d like to show off? Do you have any tips or philosophy about how to design monsters that you''d like to share?

I love to base my monsters on hominids. Apes, gorillas, this sort of things.
A simple rule is to respect the vertebrates anatomy, and simply shrink or stretch various bones according to your desire and to looks or functions.
Say, all vertebrates are built around a spine, and have four limbs. The trick is that limbs can vary in size, and outer shape, but they still have the same basic components : for example upper arm bone, lower arm bone, hand bones (meta carpus, etc).
But where we humans have five fingers of roughly the same size, with an opposable thumb, a bat will have three extremly elongated fingers with a webbing that serves as the wing. (if you dont understand what I mean, do look at a bat''s wing and the underlying bone structure).

My point is, by simply thinking about the bone structure, and messing with it, you can create a whole new beast. By thinking about why bones changed in a way or another, you can come up with some sort of history of the animal, what it does.
Is it a grazing beast, then does it really need those fierce looking canines ?
What are those tusks for ? Digging in the ground to unearth roots and mushrooms, the favourite food of our new creation.
With such long arms compared to the hind legs, doesnt our animal prefer to walk on all four ?
A predator will have very good frontal binocular vision, meaning the eyes will usually face forward and the field of view will cross, whereas prey will tend to have eyes that allow a much larger field of vision, to the loss of binocular vision on the front (compare a pigeon that can pretty much see in its back, to the deadly range perception allowed by the eyes of an owl).

And so on and so forth. I find it an endless source of amusement the stuff you can come up with.
I use the same concept to extrapolate and create fantasy races.
Trolls are a favourite


Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

This is weird. The writing people moved over to the VisArts for a thread...

I use weird things.

For example, a bunch of rocks in my backyard. I was out mowing one day and thought, "Hey! Those rocks look pretty cool!" And I made a rock monster thing... It's been awhile and I don't remember what I called it.

A lizard, a human, a jack-in-the-box, the creatures from Chip's Challenge, my dogs, an armadillo and many others have been my inspiration for art-monsters, both drawn and modeled.

What's really weird is when I get bored and, like you suggested, mix them together. I'm not sure what you call them, but they usually look very ugly or like something out of a Dr Seuss book - or possibly the result of a failed what-do-you-get-when-you-cross joke.

I'd like to know what you end up using for your painting. And, out of curiosity, what are you doing it for?

//edit - forgot one... hair. now THAT was a weird drawing...
//actually, thought of another one. I wrote an essay once and based a monster on the shape of the lines...

-geo
red eye is coming back (the old site is still around, albeit in a weird transitional form)

[edited by - Avatar God on July 4, 2003 9:45:45 PM]

[edited by - Avatar God on July 6, 2003 1:22:44 PM]

Avatar God : I think the word you are looking for is Chimera ?
And yes, I am a Visual Arts guy too... in fact, I am originally a Fine Arts / Computing guy. So this is my home, AFAIK.
Gee, I have even asked several times if I couldnt be flying moderator for this forum because whoever is supposed to be ours has posted, like, once in the last 3 years I have been here ?

Hey, you must like Creature Island, no ?

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !