BIO:
Mike Corriero is a leading creature concept artist in the entertainment industry, he combines the elements of different animals to create believable creatures. He has worked for Liquid Development, Radical Entertainment, Applibot Inc., Paizo Publishing, Zynga Inc., The Topps Company and Hasbro Inc., among others.
Mike Corriero - His website has many convincing creature concepts.
I appreciate you sharing my work with your students for inspiration, that means a lot. Thanks for also linking back to my website.
Taking a quick look at the work exhibited from the students, there are a few things I'd suggest if it's not already in the curriculum. It's hard to tell just from the one page presentations.
Whether they do those or not, I would critique their designs by trying to figure out what the skeleton might look like beneath since functionality is key and a big part of what students tend to miss when just learning creature design. Since it's so easy to want to just mix-mash and slap something together that looks like a "monster" but functionally it's missing that element of believably.
The line work and rough exploratory sketches are a good way to learn, mainly because you don't want them spending too much time rendering and polishing something if they haven't come to understand how to construct anatomy.
Have them watch documentaries - whether it's stuff on Netflix, Comcast onDemand, renting downloads, watching stuff on Youtube or visiting Zoos and drawing animals in action or at least taking time to study and observe the action of movement.