Hello, dear Patrons and readers,
I wanted to take you behind the scenes today and share some of the design process behind the creature illustrations for my novel, Terra Tamers: Alpha. I believe many of you are just as obsessed with fantasy beasts and strange wildlife as I am! Keep in mind, the cover art isn’t mine. I hired Tatum Cito to create the cover illustration. Her work is at https://www.tatumly.com/ and includes a lot of the brainstorming for Terra Tamers: Alpha at https://www.tatumly.com/projects/39LqAv!
Inspiration Sources
The Terror designs draw heavily from real world creatures, like the elm owl and mantis shrimp. I then combine a real animal with a myth, usually one that sounds fun when combined with the real creature. For example, Quetzalcoatl mixed with the elm owl gives us the name Quetzowl! In Quetzowl’s design I included extra feathers, scales and spots as nods to Quetzalcoatl’s aesthetics.
The Tools
I have an iPad Pro and Astropad studio which I connect to the Desktop version of Clip Studio Paint through Wi-fi. This seems best for functionality, keyboard shortcuts, my neck, my sanity and drawing ergonomics. I recommend Procreate if you want a simpler and more efficient drawing methodology. Plus, Procreate is better at saving settings on your favorite tools easily. I prefer Clip Studio Paint for the natural feeling lines with vector art tools. Clip Studio Paint is great if you want a filing cabinet chock full of tools. You sacrifice ease of use for options in CSP.
The Canvas
I had eBooks in mind when I started Terra Tamers: Alpha. I knew I wanted full page illustrations able to fit on Kindle. With that in mind I set my canvas size to 1600 by 2560 pixels. I also knew I wanted a physical book so family members and readers who hate eBooks could also enjoy the product. This means I had to consider printing costs of black and white versus color printing, and the image resolution. Because I wanted to print these images I chose a resolution of 300 dots per inch (DPI or pixels per inch). I also chose a transparent background instead of pure white to streamline future PNG asset production (images with transparent backgrounds are often PNGs). It’s quite simple to add a white background. I’ve found It is much more difficult to create a transparent background out of a file which doesn’t start with one.
Design Document
To create a consistent sketch style, especially when I haven’t always had time to focus on only the art, I made a design document in Microsoft Excel. Anything that lets you list down features or motifs you want to keep around will work as a design document.
In my case, I list the two major brushes and the size of brush: the ink wash brush around 28 pixels in size, and the Vector G pen at 8 pixels in size.
I also plot down any other useful tools like the Simple Scales Brush (10 to 20 pixel size) I found in the Clip Studio assets for free! I use the Scales 3 brush for pesky details like the scales along Quetzowl’s feet.
My design document also lets me keep track of things like Hex codes for coloring the line art later along elemental types.
It looks like this at the moment:
This makes it easier to copy and paste the hex codes later into clip studio paint as necessary.
I use a different Excel file to keep track of brainstorming ideas for real world animals with mythological creatures. However, I could just build a new tab in the same Excel document as my design document. There are all sorts of little choices you can make that will affect your workflow. I chose a separate document so then it would be easier to find my creature ideas for terrors and make notes for the books as I am writing and not just doing artwork.
Brainstorming and Sketching
Often, I start adlibbing names for Terrors based on creatures, real and mythical, I already have in my brain. Then I Google image references on real creatures such as mice, and search for information that might tie a mythical aesthetic into the Terror. As an example I am currently working on a sketch of Jerry the Gygamouse. I have to think through five stages of maturity. What will a child form of Jerry look like compared to an ancient Gygamouse?
I start with looking for the cutest mice I can. Then I widen my search to the more exotic mice, like kangaroo mice. Eventually I consider the capybara since it is the largest rodent in the world. The reason? Gyga- doesn’t stand for tiny, but for Gygas or Gigantes. I might need to change Gygamouse to Gigamouse. I tried a flight of fancy with the grammar and later research is stomping all over my runway.
Back to the real subject of this article, the mythical component of Gigamouse is the Gigantes or Giants in Greek mythology. My Wikipedia research, not just Rick Riordan’s books and the Percy Jackson series, indicate their supposed appearance
Over time, descriptions of the Giants make them less human, more monstrous and more “gigantic”. According to Apollodorus the Giants had great size and strength, a frightening appearance, with long hair and beards and scaly feet.[34] Ovid makes them “serpent-footed” with a “hundred arms”,[35] and Nonnus has them “serpent-haired”.
I decided that’s probably too monstrous for precious Jerry. His size will be important, and I think I can work with the long hair/beard and turn the scaly feet into gemstone encrustations or minerals because it can work with Jerry the Gygamouse’s Earth element.
Then it’s time to bring all these references into the document on Clip Studio Paint. I’ll sketch a pose I like on a raster layer, use the liquify and transform tools to find proportions, and maybe make a new raster layer for symbols or extra details I want to transform without affecting the silhouette.
Inking
I ink on a vector layer with the vector G pen. I also use a vector eraser to erase lines quickly. I’ll save this layer as its own for future adjustments and color changes that will affect the line art. Once the ink is done, I select the canvas outside the line art, invert my selection, create a new raster layer under the vector ink layer and fill it with a flat color.
The flat color acts as a good way to clip any future coloring, ink washes, and other elements to the design.
Rendering
Once again, the flat color layer can acts as a good way to clip any future coloring, ink washes, and other elements to the design. I can create more layers and clip them to the flat layer. And just like the ink layer, I can do layer adjustments and effects to create some fun images that might also be useful for merchandise or game projects in the future.
The illustration process takes at least two hours if I have a very clear idea of what I want to create. This doesn’t include my research time.
The final example is Rockong and his designs.
Join my Patreon if you want to see more Terra Tamers art, and have a great day, dear reader!
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