Continued development of Dermatillomania creature design

 Continuing on from my last blog post going through the design process for the cognitive disorder creature representing Dermatillomania with more observational drawings of the creatures linked to my design through my research.

Moving forward from observational drawings once I've exhausted that method as a resource. It increases your understanding of the anatomy of these creatures offering a concept artist the skills to modify and utilise certain features from a multitude of creatures into one cohesive design whilst retaining a sense of realism but also of fantasy since the beast is non-existing in our world. I started to create pages of really rough silhouettes and almost stick figures to figure out good poses or movement styles for the creatures, able to add and take away anatomical features much quicker due to fewer details being drawn unlike the observational drawings beforehand. Every now and then return to more detailed imagery when trying to work out how certain features may work such as additional limbs, wings, shed skin placement, etc. 

Many other concept artists such as Trent Kaniuga or Bobby Rebholz would indicate this stage as silhouetting or use other similar terminology, the method for quickly communicating ideas and establishing the overall form of a design.

Testing designs: Artists use silhouettes to see if the basic design of a character or other subject is recognizable and communicates the intended meaning.

Generating variations: Silhouette thumbnails are a quick way to generate many design variations.

Communicating ideas: Silhouettes are simple and can convey the essence of a subject without the need for details.

This process enabled me to answer questions about what I wanted from the design quickly in a way that research on real-life animals and other artists' work couldn't provide. For example, In the initial stages of the design process, I suggested ways in which the creature could emulate a sufferer's desire to hide their scars from skin picking by either having wings to fly high above prying eyes or be a creature that dwells within deep caverns. These quick thumbnails allowed me to experiment with the placement of the wings as well as different types of wings that could work on the design starting with leathery bat-like ones then when I began looking into the limbs of insects such as the praying mantis to allow the creature more dextrous movements to peel skin from hard to reach places I experimented with wings similar to that of an insect. Eventually conceding that cave dwelling would be more in line with the symptoms than a flying creature, but that the flaps of shredded skin may be mistaken as wings by hunters and adventurers alike.