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Task 3 - Ideas Generation
Task 3 - Ideas Generation
Ideas Generation can come in multiple forms, and is intended to prove that you can design an idea from scratch:
Sketches
Colour & Mood Ideas
Photobashing
Silhouetting
Blockouts
Prototypes
Turnarounds
You are expected to complete several of these for each visual asset in your project in order to plan them out properly.
For example, you could create sketches, colour ideas, photobashes, turnarounds and silhouettes for your main character as one visual asset.
Test Pieces refer to prototypes, in-progress work and/or first attempts at creating your visual assets.
You are expected to provide test pieces for each visual asset.
Creature Photobashes & Silhouettes
These are 12 initial photobashes and silhouettes I created that I can potentially use to create my cryptid designs. I tried to ensure each design had some kind of idea or thought behind them, such as the squid (page 1, design 6) having elements resembling Yokai with its large mouth, filled with big, sharp teeth. It also resembles the myth of Medusa, with many tentacles surrounding its head.
Another, more obvious inspiration is the creature made up of rats and snakes (page 2, design 4), being quite heavily inspired by the idea of a 'rat king'. This idea is one that I think could be very interesting to develop and brainstorm ideas for with the dynamic of the snakes being a predator towards the rats, yet being attached to their bodies, creating a kind of parasitic or controlling concept.
Continuing with the parasitic idea, another one of my favourites from these designs is the large decaying fish (page 2, design 1) with other creatures such as squids, lampreys and barnacles living off of it. I came up with this concept after finding information about how barnacles grow on whales' bodies and bother them, as well as stories of colossal squids grappling onto sperm whales to drown then eat them. I think this idea could be quite a morbid but interesting pathway to follow, exploring a zombie-like creature that is decaying and constantly in the process of being eaten, yet continuing to function and live, similar to the legend of Prometheus who would have his liver eaten every day. This idea also relates to the autojector machine I found in my developed research, that was capable of temporarily keeping a creature alive or even reviving them from fatal conditions, such as decapitation.
Some of the other ideas I had were more tame and less grotesque, such as the horned owl (page 2, design 6) and fox-squirrel (page 2, design 5) designs that took a creature and kept them mostly the same, but added some features from other animals to them. These ideas were inspired by less threatening and supernatural urban legends and folklores, and focused on more believable or simple ideas such as the jackalope and bigfoot. I think I should include one of these designs or something similar in my final products as going with an idea less about horror and more about rarity will help to diversify my designs and show a range of how urban legends can be interpreted and portrayed.
Out of all of these designs, I would say the ones with the strongest silhouettes and shapes would be the skeletal vampire (page 1, design 1), the winged goat (page 1, design 5), the cave salamander (page 2, design 3) and the horned owl (page 2, design 6), whilst the ideas I think have the strongest potential for stories and themes would be the zombie fish (page 2, design 1), the jellyfish-skeleton (page 2, design 2) and the snake-rat king (page 2, design 4).
Here are the rough, sketches I drew over the silhouettes to help explain my ideas for each design and to help them appear more cohesive than a jumble of images stitched together. I tried to use the silhouettes primarily, and avoid the not-silhouetted photobashes whilst sketching these to try and see how I would interpret the shapes and to help my designs be more original and as I saw them in my head. I did, however, refer to the original images to help me keep some proportions accurate and find the borders of certain areas, such as outlining the goat's legs or the tail feathers on the centipede-bird.
Google Form Results
To help me decide on which designs I will be picking, I have created a Google Form featuring the designs to help get outside views and opinions.
My form first determines what the person actually knows about cryptids and urban legends, helping me to gain an idea on how this subject is commonly perceived and what aspects of it are most well-known so I can ensure my final ideas are recognisable and understandable to people with basic knowledge of the subject.
I then show the silhouettes I have created and ask which of them have the most recognisable and understandable shapes to firstly help me find which of my designs will be most clear and readable in a sketchy journal illustration and blurry photo, and also to find which of my designs are lacking in that aspect.
Finally, I show the silhouettes with overlaid sketches and ask which design they like most, what they think could be added, and which design is scariest. This will help me find the general consensus on which of my designs people are most interested in which I can then expand upon, with both my own ideas and anything that others suggest. I'm also interested to see the variance in people's favourites compared to the one's people say they think are the most scary, finding if people prefer scarier designs or if the two aspects are mutually exclusive. It will also be helpful to find what people find scary in a design which I can explore and expand upon to help make my products even more frightening.
I wanted to be careful with the ordering of my form, first asking what they already knew before showing them any examples to avoid accidentally reminding them of anything and to see what comes to mind immediately with no reference. I also ensured the silhouettes were shown before the sketches to make people formulate their own ideas on what the shapes represented and to be able to find what people could recognise with little information.
I also ensured that all written questions were not required as I believe participants who wouldn't want to write out an answer to these questions would either leave the quiz, reducing my sample size, or would clog up the responses with answers like "n/a" or "not sure". By leaving these questions optional, those who want to provide additional detail can and I will be able to easily find and review their feedback.
The first two questions I asked on my Google Form helped me to determine the extent of knowledge possessed by the people answering my survey as well as a rough idea of the average person's concept of cryptids.
From the responses I received on my first question, asking which urban legends they were already aware of, the majority of answers related to creatures dwelling in bodies of water, such as mermaids, the Loch Ness Monster and water serpents.
This confirms to me that an ocean-themed design will hopefully resonate quite well with most people when displayed and that they will probably be able to link it to something they are already aware of, so I will most likely look into choosing one of my more aquatic designs.
In my second question, I asked what people thought made a design scary in order to try and understand what it is about cryptids that make people fear them. Almost all of the responses reference some kind of unfamiliarity or abnormality being the main generation of fear in these ideas, including examples such as lurking among us unbeknownst, and unnaturally large features, with a common choice being teeth.
This has been quite helpful in allowing me to understand what I will need to do to in order to make my designs more unnerving and will be very helpful when I explore various design ideas for my final choices, experimenting with altering the size of different features and experimenting with unnatural and otherworldly features that make the designs seem strange and unexplainable.
In the next section, I showcased my silhouettes and asked people which they thought had the most recognisable and comprehensible shapes. I think it will be very important for my final designs to have clear, uncomplicated silhouettes when posed in dark, obstructed backgrounds and when displayed on messy journal pages to really help their designs stand out and not appear confusing. Therefore, the results of this question helped me to determine which designs people felt were too cluttered and which ones were clear and understandable.
The results for the first set of designs showed a very even split between the bat-skeleton, the two-headed aquatic dinosaur and the skeleton-goat, with the other designs getting little to no votes. This information is very helpful as it has shown me the inclusion of excessive or overlapping details such as multiple sets of wings or a mess of tentacles really damage a silhouette's recognisability, compared to more simple and protruding features such as spider legs, large fins and a goat's skull.
The second sheet of silhouettes had a much more varied result, with most designs getting at least a few votes. However, it seems the most recognisable silhouettes in this collection are the the horned owl and the salamander, whilst the least recognisable is the rat king. This further proves my previous observation that large, protruding features greatly improve the quality of a silhouette, as seen in the antlers of the owl. However, it also shows me that the shape and pose of the creature's entire body can aid recognition, as showcased by the salamander's very clear, S-shaped pose.
I believe the reason the rat king's silhouette was least recognised was due to the quantity of bodies and heads, with so many features packed into a small area, causing a lot of overlapping and combining shapes, along with rat skulls not having a very recognisable shape all resulting in a silhouette that is hard to read and understand.
The final section of my form showed my sketches that I made over the silhouettes and asked people which of the designs they liked most, what they thought could be changed about them, which they found scariest and why. This was done in order to receive feedback on what already works well in these designs for me to expand upon and keep in my design, as well as to find what doesn't work as well and generate new ideas to improve upon them and work towards making the best designs that I can.
In terms of results for my first sheet of designs, the goat skeleton design is the most popular, with the bat skeleton and aquatic dinosaur in joint second. The least popular design is the winged centipede. The scariest design is the bat skeleton, with the second scariest being the aquatic dinosaur. The least scary designs were the goat skeleton and long-legged skeleton bison.
Something I found quite interesting from these results is that the opinions on which designs were peoples' favourites compared to which designs people found scariest differed quite a bit, with the goat skeleton being the most popular design but also one of the least scary. This shows me that whilst fear is still quite a good factor in making a good cryptid, and can still influence people's answers (as evidenced by the aquatic dinosaur being the second scariest and second most popular), it isn't the only factor that makes people like the design and does not need to be my primary concern when exploring these designs further.
One common theme I noticed in why people picked specific designs for their favourites was being able to relate it to an existing creature that they had prior knowledge of, such as people mentioning aspects of bats, goats, giraffes, rams and griffons in the designs. Therefore, I will keep in mind whilst creating alternate designs that it is important to show the initial creatures I am referencing and make sure my design influences aren't lost in trying to make a design too scary or uncanny.
A common theme I noticed in why people found designs scary was movement that would outspeed a human, or impede a human's movement to catch them. Common examples include multiple long limbs and tentacles that people feared would grab them, as well as the ability of flight. This shows me that if faced with one of these creatures, people's instinctive reaction would be to attempt to flee, with fear stemming from the idea that they would be unable to escape. I will keep this in mind for my final ideas, as I also think that the idea of no escape when encountering one of these creatures is a chilling concept that would really help the descriptions and appearances of my designs become more terrifying.
For my second sheet of designs, the most popular choices were very evenly spread, with a first place tie between the zombie fish and the jellyfish skeleton, as well as a second place tie between the salamander and the horned owl. The only design to not receive any votes was the rat king. The scariest choice was an overwhelming almost unanimous decision on the jellyfish skeleton, with nearly 75% of the votes.
People's reasonings for their favourites in this question were a little more vague, mostly expressing their favour towards the design or saying that they liked the details. The most feedback I can really take away from this question is that people seem to like most of the designs and that they enjoy cute and unusual features and themes.
For the reasons people gave as to why they found designs scary, a common response was a lanky, skeletal structure as well as appearing alien, such as having multiple heads. I believe the main reason for these responses is that people fear these designs for their uncanniness, appearing like Earthly creatures but with slight changes that make them seem 'off' or 'wrong', such as the skeleton having a human shape, but being far too tall and skinny to believably appear as human. I can try incorporating this into my final designs by taking some of their features and warping them to appear slightly wrong and strange, subtly implying to the viewer that something is not right and making the design more eerie.
As for what people thought could be changed about the designs, a common suggestion was larger or more prominent features, including necks, fins and wings. This corresponds with the second question I asked in the form, determining what people found scary about cryptids, in which the majority of answers referred to large features. Additionally, larger and more prominent features will protrude much more from the rest of the design, helping to create much more visible and powerful silhouettes. Therefore, I will definitely explore altering the sizes of different features in my design, making features like horns and wings much bigger to see how it changes the designs and finding what makes them more intimidating.
Another idea that was suggested that I am very interested in exploring is "More goat-like horns". To expand on this idea a bit further, one of my ideas for creating alternate designs before I had even created the form was to research different animals with horns and to see how the shapes and sizes of their horns vary. I think that finding a set of horns with a very prominent and powerful shape will really help my design appear strong and intimidating, as well as once again contribute greatly to the design's silhouette. Furthermore, I can combine this with my previous point, exploring how different horn designs benefit and appear more intimidating at different sizes. Therefore, this is something I definitely want to research and experiment with in my design.
Design Experimentation
To begin experimenting with alternate design ideas, I drew a quick, mostly featureless base for each of my designs and added new layers above them, containing various features. This allows me to show and hide different features at my choosing to mix and match different designs and find what works.
These are some design variations I created for my goat skeleton cryptid. To experiment with its design, I created a front-view, side-view and head only sketch, allowing me to try out different wing, horn and leg designs, as well as some additional features.
I understand that one of the most important aspects of this design is the horns, being one of the largest and most prominent features of the design that greatly aid the design's silhouette. Therefore, I dedicated a good portion of this experimentation to trying out different horn shapes and sizes. From what I've found, I think going for horns of a larger than usual size will be the best choice to follow for this design, as my poll has shown people find large features intimidating and these exaggerated features will really help the design to stand out and appear otherworldly. The only issue I can see being caused from creating giant horns is that I may struggle to fit the design onto journal pages without pushing text out of the way and making the layout of the page seem awkward. To avoid this, I can try and use a style of horn that doesn't extend outwards too far whilst still remaining large by curving back towards the head.
Continuing with the idea of unnaturally large features, I created an alternate design for the side-view with much longer, skeletal legs, as well as some exposed ribs to continue with a skeleton theme. This makes the design much taller, more imposing and more uncanny, and I think it could create some really unique and creepy opportunities for my sighting photos. Again, this risks finding difficulty in fitting the design onto the page. To solve this issue, I could make the finer details of the design smaller in the sketch and rely on isolated close-ups to showcase the smaller details that get left out of the main sketch.
Another feature that is quite important to this design is the wings. In my experimentation, I tried alternating from the feathered, more crow-like wings to a more skinny, bat-like design. In my side-view, I also experimented with the positioning of the feathered wings, sketching a raised pose as though it was ready to fly as well as a lowered, dormant pose. Comparing the two wing designs, I personally think the feathered wings fit much better with the rest of the design, as while I think the bat-like wings do help the design to feel more demonic and unholy, I think the feathered wings make it appear more as an angel of death which I prefer the idea of. Additionally, the feathered wings are much better at making the design resemble a pegasus, helping to link this creature to existing ideas of mythology.
These are some design experimentations I created for my aquatic dinosaur cryptid. I created a full-body sketch with two designs for the neck, differing in length, as well as an isolated head sketch where I had more space to experiment with smaller details.
One design alteration that was recommended to me in my form was "Less fins and thicker". I interpreted this to mean the spines across the designs back as opposed to its four actual fins, and as such I created an alternate design for the creature's spines, using fewer but larger protrusions that connect together to form a 'sail'. I continued with this idea and made an alternate design that reduced the number of spines across the designs neck and replaced them with four much longer spikes for each neck. I quite like this idea and am considering continuing with it for my final design as I think the reduced quantity of detail helps to make the spikes stand out more and make the design as a whole less cluttered. I also think this would make the silhouette and shape of the design more clear with lots of unnecessary detail being removed.
For the isolated head sketch, I mainly experimented with different horn/tusk protrusions, as well as creating some alternate eye and teeth designs. One idea I came up with that I quite like is a 'double-tusk' design which involves two large tusks protruding from either side of the face, as well as another two, smaller tusks accompanying them. I think this gives the head a really unique shape and I think it is one of the most visually pleasing as well as practical designs of all the horns I created.
For the eyes of the design, I had previously been using slanted, triangle-shaped eyes following the shape of the head that made the creature look angry. In my experimentation, I tried out an alternate design, using a simple round circle. Comparing the two, I think I can confidently say that I much prefer the circular eye over the triangular one. I feel like the triangular eye makes the design look more cartoonish and unrealistic as well as appearing angry as opposed to the circular eye which feels almost emotionless, which makes sense as most aquatic creatures are unable to make facial expressions to show emotion. I think this makes the design feel even more creepy and ominous in the same sense as mysterious deep-sea creatures which we know little about.
These are some design experimentations I created for my salamander cryptid. I used this sketch to try out alternate eye, antenna, arm, leg and carapace designs.
My initial photobash for this design combined the salamander's body with a mole's arms, however in my experimentation I also included webbed hands and feet that resemble an actual salamander's limbs to find which I preferred. Comparing the two, I'm quite conflicted over which one I prefer and I think both have their positives, such as the mole hands helping to make the design look more unnatural whilst the webbed hands fit better with the rest of the design. I also tried out some long, centipede like arms to make the creature look more bug-like which I also think works quite well. Overall, I'm quite happy with all three arm designs I created and I think any of them should work fine in my final product, so I will likely end up choosing the arms that I think work best with the other features I choose to include in the design.
I was quite interested in coming up with some different concepts for the salamander's eyes, as this design is intended to live in dark caves where eyes are either obsolete or more developed to allow for more powerful vision. The alternate designs for the eyes that I created include two very small eyes, 8 slightly larger eyes similar to a spider and finally two large compound eyes, similar to a fly. I'm quite happy with all of these choices as I think they could all be considered creepy in their own respective ways, and I think they all fit well with a cave-dwelling creature with limited access to light. I also have the option to omit eyes from this design altogether, similar to some real life creatures that have adapted to not need eyes at all, which I think has the potential to make the design appear quite strange and creepy.
I created three alternate forms for the legs of this design, including six skinny bug-like legs, webbed feet similar to an actual salamander and a more centipede-like form of the first set of legs, containing twice as many. As I included in my first photobash of this design, I also have the option to include both bug-like and salamander-like legs in the design at the same time, giving it two larger main back legs as well as a lot of smaller legs that could be used for additional support or gathering. I think the creepiest of these leg designs would be the twelve-legged centipede design, however this is also the most messy and may cause issues such as cluttering the design and making the silhouette less recognisable. Therefore, I might decide to choose the six-legged concept, maintaining some of the creepiness whilst keeping the design simple and clean.
Colour Ideas
I have created 60 colour ideas for my three designs, with each having 20. I tried to explore colour palettes that realistically fit with the design, that displayed the theme or mood I am trying to express in these designs, or that I thought could produce some interesting and visually unique results. These palettes are displayed on designs that are not final, but I feel display enough details to help me choose a colour palette no matter which design I end up creating.
These are some colour ideas I created for my goat skeleton design. I mostly experimented with dark colours, such as blacks and greys, however I did also try out some lighter colours to see how they would affect the design.
From what I've found, I think I will probably include elements of both light and dark, possibly giving the creature a darker body with a lighter skull, as I've found this makes a nice contrast between the skeletal and organic parts of the body and helps to make its more unnatural features stand out, resembling ideas like the grim reaper with their dark cloak and white skull.
I also think that trying to incorporate some more saturated, yet still darker colours such as dark reds and greens will help to make the creature appear less greyscale and more interesting. I can also potentially link these colours to some different ideas about the creature, like greens resembling forests it lives in and being used for camouflage, or red colours indicating demonic associations.
Some of the designs I am least happy with are the ones that have the goat's main body in a very bright colour. I think these designs take attention away from the creature's skull, one of the main features that make the design ominous. Additionally, the light colour scheme, especially on the wings, makes the design look more angelic and holy than demonic and unnatural, which makes the creature appear much less threatening and will make it stand out negatively much more in dark and mysterious sighting photos. Therefore, I will most likely present the creature's body in a dark colour, however I may still use lighter tones for features such as the horns, hooves or skull to help those aspects of the design stand out.
These are the most popular colour designs for the goat from feedback I received.
The design on the right being chosen confirms my belief that including contrasting elements of both light and dark is quite effective in this design, as well as darker, less saturated colours being more effective overall, helping the design appear spooky and undead.
I think both of these choices are valid candidates that I could see myself using for the goat's final colour scheme, however due to the more prominent contrasting colours and threatening appearance, I will primarily be referencing the design on the right for my final colour palette.
These are some colour ideas I created for my aquatic dinosaur design. For this design, I felt like I was able to explore a wider range of colours for the creature's main body without it feeling too unnatural or unrealistic due to underwater creatures coming in a vast range of colours and textures.
Some of the designs that I find most effective include darker colours for the main body, with lighter features such as fins and eyes, with one example being the blue design in the bottom-left. I think this colour scheme is a really effective use of more saturated and brighter colours and makes the creature look almost bioluminescent and glowing, which I think could help the design to be more visible in darker environments and also creepier, similar to the glow of an anglerfish lure. This could also provide some material for annotation, explaining how it gained a bioluminescent glow, with a possible explanation being a buildup of bioluminescent plankton accumulating on its body.
Another design I quite like is the dark red colour scheme near the bottom-right. I think that this dark, blood-red colour across the creatures entire body helps to make it appear demonic or vampiric, similar in colour to the real life vampire squid. This colour scheme also makes sense in a realistic sense as many ocean creatures are unable to see dark red and black colours, making it a common colour among deep-sea creatures to stay hidden from predators.
One interesting idea I came up with was the idea to potentially include multiple colour palettes from this list. Many aquatic creatures, such as octopuses and cuttlefish have the ability to change colour to camouflage themselves among terrain or to create symbols warning predators. While this design is much larger and presumably an apex predator, not needing to camouflage itself or threaten predators, I could still incorporate ideas of colour changing as I think it is an alien concept that makes creatures feel much more mysterious and otherworldly. Additionally, it would give me some interesting details to explore and annotate in the journal's descriptions, as well as diversify the sighting photos.
These are the most popular colour designs for the dinosaur from feedback I received.
The black and red design chosen matches my belief that dark and red colours work very well for this design, giving it an evil, demonic appearance whilst also not being too unrealistic.
The design on the left was also one I was highly considering due to my opinion that it is one of the most believable and seemingly realistic colour schemes out of the range of palettes.
I am also quite fond of these two designs and think both are very probable to influence my final design, however they both also differ greatly so I think I will have to choose one pathway or the other as they will be difficult to mix effectively.
These are some colour ideas I created for my salamander design. I think I had the most freedom in exploring this design's colour schemes compared to my other two as salamanders and their related species often have bright, vibrant colours to ward off predators and vary greatly depending on their habitat and adaptations.
Some ideas I quite like are designs that are very pale and ghostly white. These colour schemes appear almost translucent and were inspired by real life cave salamanders that are very pale due to a lack of sunlight or predators warranting colour. I think this palette would do a very good job of communicating that this creature inhabits deep caves and underground bodies of water and would help it to stand out in dark environments for my sighting artworks. Additionally, I think the idea of making my creature partially translucent, even without a pale colour scheme, could be a really visually interesting idea to follow and could help the salamander become more distinct and unique compared to my other designs
Another palette idea I took from this experimentation that I quite liked was examples that mixed dark blue-grey colours with lighter or more vibrant tones. This is similar to an example I spoke about in my aquatic dinosaur colour experimentation where I stated it makes the creature look almost bioluminescent. While this idea works for deep sea creatures, it also works great for a cave-dwelling creature and, again, would help it to stand out in darker backgrounds. This idea also showcases very vibrant and saturated hues that a lot of salamanders possess, helping the creature to seem more realistic and authentic.
These are the most popular colour designs for the salamander from feedback I received.
These colours deviate from my ideas of pale and bright tones, however I can also understand why these designs became popular using darker green and brown colours, with these dark shades being commonly associated with caves and creepiness.
Using dark, earthy colours could also be helpful in communicating the mole-like and underground elements of this creature's designs. Therefore, I will probably be taking elements from these designs at least for the mole claws by the creature's head.
The salamander is probably the design I am most uncertain on in terms of their colour scheme. I may end up choosing my preferences, the votes of those who gave me feedback, or a mixture of both.
Final Designs + Practise
From my design experimentation, personal observations and feedback from others, I have chosen my three, final designs seen below. To help me cement these designs in my head and become more practised in drawing them, I created some practise sketches for each creature in a cleaner, monochromatic style. I also designed a silhouette for each design to help me explore how effectively I can present the design through form and shape rather than visible details.
These are the practise sketches I created for my goat creature design, including a headshot, a silhouette, the creature's body and another headshot, taken from a side-view.
I'm really happy with how these turned out as I think these images capture the lifeless, deathly theme I wanted to display with this skeleton goat design, especially through the black, empty eyes and eerie, skeleton grin due to the shape of its jaw and exposed teeth.
I think the silhouette turned out really nicely, however I do think I could have improved the angle and pose of the goat due to the amount of extra outlines I needed to include in the shape to make the design somewhat recognisable, mostly due to the wings covering most of the body. If I were to draw it again, I would pose the goat differently to have the wings raised above the body, and would change the viewing angle to be more side-on.
These are the practise sketches I created for my aquatic dinosaur creature design, including a (double) headshot, a silhouette, a sketch of the creature's sail emerging from a body of water and a larger headshot with a wide-open mouth.
The idea of the creature's sail rising above the water is an idea I thought of when designing the sail itself, and I think it will be a really effective method to create mystery and fear by showing a small portion of the design, implying there is a monster, but leaving the rest to the viewer's imagination. I think this idea could be really successful to portray in one of my sighting photographs and could inspire some interesting annotation describing the author's personal experience seeing it.
I think out of all my designs, this creature has the strongest silhouette due to its incredibly prominent, protruding features, including its two necks, large fins, spiky sail and long tail. I think this will help massively in an underwater sighting photo, allowing me to add lots of obscuring features such as blur and mist that would be present underwater, whilst still making the creature distinguishable and recognisable.
These are the practise sketches I created for my salamander creature design, including a headshot, silhouette, body and a sketch of the creature emerging from a burrow.
I found it quite challenging to effectively communicate that this creature has no eyes without making it easily mistakable that its nostrils were its eyes. To help with this, I used shading to imply slight indents and markings around where its eye sockets would be, helping to show that this creature is blind and, in the process, making it look slightly more creepy and alien.
I thought including a sketch of the salamander emerging from a burrow would help to explain that they are a creature that inhabits underground areas such as caves and that they are able to dig through the earth, showcasing some of the mole influences in their design. I think this turned out really nicely and I believe the inclusion of raised antennas in that sketch have also helped to communicate the blindness of this creature, relying on alternate methods to vision to explore and be aware of its surroundings.
Journal Page Ideas
To plan out how I will create and lay out my journal pages as well as the features I will include, I have created this mindmap including various different features and elements I found whilst researching examples included in my moodboards. I have split it up into three sections, being descriptions, illustrations, and style.
This section of my mindmap explored ideas I can research and include for factual descriptions, meaning essentially any written annotation I could include on the journal pages.
Annotation and description will be incredibly important on these journal pages, explaining what the creatures actually are and what they are capable of, providing me with the ability to generate much more fear and intrigue than if it were to just be a design displayed on its own. Furthermore, annotation will be able to provide details and information that would be impossible to showcase through imagery alone, such as how the creatures react to different occurrences and even their names.
My plan for these pages is for them to be written from the point of view of some kind of explorer or researcher, documenting their findings and providing their own insights based on what they have found. Building off this initial idea, one concept I want to include in my annotation is the author's personal experience and story with the creature, including details such as any damage they took in an encounter and how they even came to know about the cryptid, including old books they read on the subject or information and beliefs they gathered from locals near the creature's habitat.
I also think it would be interesting for the annotation to relate the creatures to real life myths and legends, such as Medusa or vampires, as well as real life creatures that these designs take inspiration from. This would be done from the author's point of view, detailing their findings and observations, but would be a subtle yet effective way of helping me to showcase my thought process and research that led into the creation of these designs.
I also think annotation is a great method to explore different ideas of the creatures further, giving me an opportunity to explain unusual elements in their designs such as giant horns or skeletal bodies. This information could relate to the creature's diet or habitat, explaining how these features aid it in gathering food, intimidating competitors and surviving in dangerous or uninhabitable locations. Alternatively, I could include the author's speculation on how seemingly impossible features of the creature are achieved, such as how a skeleton creature could move and react as though it were alive.
This section of my mindmap explored illustrations, including every detail I could think of or find that I could potentially include as a sketch or piece of artwork to better explain and display details.
I think that including sketches that depict information about the creature, as well as the creature itself, will really benefit the layout of the page, helping to break up large blocks of text and to provide more visual information for the viewer to look at, giving a basic understanding of what I am describing at a glance without having to read through the annotation. Furthermore, including illustrations will allow me to take up less of the page speaking about the appearances of various items or features and will allow me to simply show them, creating less ambiguity in my descriptions and allowing me to talk more about what the item does and how it is related to the creature.
One idea I had for potential illustrations was close-ups of isolated features of the creature, such as horns or eyes. This could help me showcase some smaller features that might not be apparent on a full-body view, as well as create a great opportunity to include more in-depth annotations that showcase unique features and abilities of the creature that make it otherworldly and eerie.
Another idea for illustration that I am quite interested in exploring is associated objects or signs of activity. From the examples in my moodboard, I find that including various items relating to the creature, such as feathers, footprints and markings really help to make the page feel more authentic, like an actual document that someone went out into a harsh environment and recorded. I also think these features help to make the creature itself feel more real, by including as much additional detail as I can to make the concept feel more and more realistic and existent.
Of course, one of the most important illustrations for me to include will be of the creature itself, displaying a full body view in a dynamic pose. However, I can also expand on this image by showcasing other views of the same design, including turnarounds as well as potentially a skeleton version, showcasing the creatures composition and anatomy. I definitely think I should include some of these ideas somewhere in my final pieces, to help display the full view of my design and show off all of its features, giving a more complete idea of the design compared to a single image which might hide specific features behind others such as wings covering a designs body.
The final, smallest area of my mindmap showcases the different factors that make up the weathered, sketchbook journal style I am hoping to achieve.
I think that practicing and experimenting with producing effects similar to the designs I researched in my moodboards will really help my final product to stand out and present the theme I'm going for at a passing glance, appearing mysterious and intriguing. I also think that this specific visual style will help me to create some unique and interesting products due to the limitations it provides me with, such as a lack of colour, making me showcase my understanding of depth and tone by shading with only black and grey.
Exploring the various details included in a lot of journal-style pages is another thing that will really help to add detail and character to my presentations, such as fingerprints and coffee stains adding noise to what would otherwise be a plain, empty background. I'm also interested in exploring how I can add extra information about the creatures I am displaying in these messy, background details, such as including scraps of newspaper headlines glued onto the page showcasing previous sightings and stories of the creature, or a similar idea of including extracts of previous research and sketched interpretations found in old books and journals pasted onto the page. This could help me to subtly provide more backstory and authenticity to my designs without taking up too much of the page and taking space away from other information that would be considered more important and beneficial to include.
Aside from the content provided in information and illustrations included on the page, I will also need to consider the style and placement for how these will be displayed to ensure the theme and tone of my project is easily visible. An example for how I will accomplish this is by deciding the style of font I will use. In many of the examples I found, all annotation was written in sketchy, handwritten text, giving me the option of using a script font that appears handwritten or writing the annotation by hand myself, whether digitally or by scanning a physical piece of paper. I will also have to account for the readability in a handwritten font, as individual letters will be much harder to distinguish in small, handwritten fonts meaning I will potentially have to use a larger font size, restricting the amount of annotation I will be able to write.
This is a rough layout I created to see how well I would be able to fit in a good amount of both illustration and annotation onto a double, A5 page spread to mimic the canvas provided by a standard notebook. Blue rectangles represent imagery whilst yellow rectangles represent text.
In this test, I tried overlaying some different features, such as photographs and newspaper clippings that would be separate pieces of paper that have been attached to the page. I think this will be a really good idea to include, as it allows me to provide more information and artwork while saving space on the page, however it also comes with the risk of covering up work I am proud of and want to display, or alternatively covering up annotation and making sentences unreadable. Therefore, to include these overlapping features I will need to think very carefully about where I place them and how much space they occupy.
I also made the left page very cramped and overloaded with information, which I think will help in providing the messy, chaotic layouts I've seen in a lot of journal entry examples. However, I will still need to consider how much space I am allotting to each piece of information to ensure I am able to fit in enough detail and not leave any pieces of my work feeling undeveloped or unfinished.
This is a prototype piece I created to practice creating imagery in a worn, journal style. This is more or less how I will want my final pieces to be displayed, however my designs, illustrations and annotations as well as the overall layout of the page will be much more developed and thought-out in my final products, with many of the examples in this image being placeholder text and undeveloped sketches.
This prototype example includes various features, such as headings, annotations, illustrations of my design as well as isolated features and related imagery and overlaid resources, such as newspapers and photographs.
To try and create a more sketched, journal-like style, I explored a few different brushes to find the rough, crayon brush I ended up using. I combined this with a quick and rough example of cross-hatching for shading on my illustrations to help them appear as though they were roughly sketched by hand.
One feature that I tried out and really like is the faint inclusion of a background behind the main creature sketch. I think this is an excellent way to provide more detail to the page as well as subtly provide information about the creature, giving a quick, simple idea of its habitat and its size. While I think the example in my prototype, being a few trees and grass patches, could have been executed better, I do think it gives a good idea of the effect I want to achieve and I am interested in seeing how I can improve this idea to benefit my final design.
Another aspect of this page that I explored was various fonts, considering readability as well as appearance to find fonts that look as though they could have been handwritten whilst still being legible. I ended up using the fonts 'Chalk Stick' and 'Beautiful Vampires', which I think ended up working quite effectively, however I still want to explore more font ideas as I think these fonts may be too messy to be readable at small sizes.
This is how the blank pages appear without any of the additional features present. This was made entirely digitally with no use of photographs, made up entirely of various gradients and filters applied onto a blank white page.
I also added some additional features to make the page appear more messy and authentic, such as coffee stains and thumbprints, making the page seem used and realistic than if it were to be entirely plain.
I'm really happy with how this turned out as I feel I've done a really good job with using many faint effects to create a semi-realistic image.
One thing I'm not too happy about on this page is how prominent the thumbprints are, as looking at them again and comparing them to other journal examples, I think they would be a lot more faded and smudged, as well as higher in quantity. Therefore, this will be something I come back to and try to improve for my final pieces.
These are the isolated images of the newspaper and photographs I applied onto the page. I ensured I kept the full image of these features as a template in case I cut off specific features then needed to use them again, such as ripping off the bottom half of the newspaper to isolate the headline. Keeping the original template is also helpful in case I want to make alternate sources with different contents.
To create the newspaper design, I followed a similar process to creating the journal page, taking a blank white page and applying various filters and effects. However, I used much stronger and saturated examples for this page to help it stand out against the journal and appear even more weathered. I also used a rough brush to erase the edges of the newspaper and add a few cuts and tears to help the paper appear as though its been deteriorating for some time.
I also created some prototype assets for the newspaper, including a page border, a name, a headline, a subheading, a photograph and some guidelines to indicate text. This was an interesting experiment to try out different fonts and font sizes, exploring to find how newspapers are normally presented and finding how they make important elements stand out. I think I did quite a good job at replicating this design to create a believable fictional newspaper and I am quite happy with how it turned out. To create the picture displayed on the newspaper, I took an image of a mountain and applied a filter to reduce the amount of colours displayed as well as adding some blur.
To create the polaroid photograph, I took a white square and added a black square with some grey noise effects and a black gradient around the edges to create a blurry, dark background. I then took my goat-skeleton photobash, applied a black and white filter as well as some motion blur and placed them in the photo. In my final product, I want these photographs to display sighting artwork that I draw and produce myself, rather than just applying images and blurring them.
For both the newspaper and the photograph, I applied a subtle shadow around their edges to help them appear raised from the page and taped on rather than printed. I think this effect worked really well and helps to make the page appear more realistic than digitally produced.
This is a prototype page I created for my aquatic dinosaur design, rougly following the structure of my goat's journal entry but experimenting with some new ideas.
When creating this page, I realised some of the changes I would have to make to the details I included and how I would lay out the page, with some features needing to be excluded, such as the creature's footprint as this design has no feet. Another feature I struggled to come up with ideas for was the two associated items in the bottom right. To help me figure out what to include, I checked my mindmap as well as my journal page moodboards and decided on the creature's egg and one of its teeth.
One different idea I got to explore in this page was designing a skeleton for a creature with flesh and muscle, as opposed to my goat design whose skeleton was already on display. I placed the skull design for my creature below its isolated head to better display how the structure of its face is changed by the inclusion of skin. To help make my skull design more realistic, I referenced an image of a goblin shark's skull whilst sketching it. The heads of goblin sharks were a main source of reference for the dinosaur's heads and an element of their original photobash.
I also slightly remade the effects overlaid on the page for this sheet, changing the position, shapes, sizes and visibility of coffee stains and thumbprints. This was mostly to help my different sheets visibly distinct and not appear as the same page with different details, however also allowed me to experiment with some different attempts at dirtying the page.
One feature I experimented with quite a bit on this new page was the thumbprints. Compared to my goat entry, this entry contains many more thumbprints scattered across the page in clusters, as well as presenting them more blurred and transparent. I think this does a much better job at resembling the markings that would be left by an author sketching in notebook pages where fingers would frequently be placed in the same positions, especially in the bottom corners of the pages, and their prints blurred by heat and moisture. Therefore, I definitely think this is an improvement to my previous attempt and will be more primarily referenced when designing my final products.
This is the fake photograph I created for my aquatic dinosaur design. Because this photo is implied to be taken underwater at considerable depths, it wouldn't make sense to appear as though it were taken from a regular, polaroid camera. Therefore, I have added a black border around the image as well as some statistics across the top and bottom presented in pixelated text to appear like an image taken from an ROV's camera. The text currently has no meaning with the numbers chosen at random, however this could be something I look into researching to make my products more accurate to real life as well as discreetly displaying more information about the creature's habitat with text informing the viewer what the number is referring to, such as the depths it resides at.
I'm really happy with how this concept turned out as I think the dark blue lighting as well as the terrain in the foreground partially obscuring the blurry dinosaur does a really good job at conveying the 'underwater mystery' aspect of this design that a lot of people found scary in my form. I also think this photograph helps to make the creature seem even more ominous by giving a sense of scale and letting people roughly see how giant the dinosaur is in comparison to them, making it seem powerful and unnatural.
This photograph is a great example of why I think having a recognisable silhouette for my design will be really beneficial and something I need to ensure I execute well, as despite the dark, blurry and obscured depiction of the creature, certain features such as its fins and two necks are still clearly visible. Having a strong silhouette will allow me to communicate specific features more clearly whilst not having to sacrifice the authenticity and mystery of my designs.
This is the prototype page I created for my salamander design.
One unique feature included in this prototype page is a sketch of a potential sign of the creature's presence, with this example displaying a burrowed hole. This differs to my previous examples, in which I included items related to the creatures such as teeth or feathers. I think this test worked out quite well and I should be able to expand on it for my final products, exploring more signs of activity such as scratch marks, footprints and chewed or damaged objects.
For the photograph I produced for this creature, I experimented more with some filters and effects I have access to, creating some bloom as well as very slight chromatic aberration and noise. I also added some shadows, adding depth and emphasising the lighting in the image. I think this has turned out really well and I think I have done a good job at making the photograph appear realistic.
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