Sometimes it can be tricky to come up with designs for creatures. How do you get inspired? What are
some things to keep in mind when designing? How do I make my designs feel a little more inspired
and less... blah? In this recent livestream, I took audience suggestions and designed creatures on the
spot based on their requests! I came up with the first object which was a windowsill planter, and
then our viewers suggested the rest of the objects I would turn into creatures. By the end, we finished
with the planter, washi tape, a spray bottle, an old speaker, a Google Home speaker, and a laptop.
The first object creature I designed was this bug planter. I was inspired by what plants made
me think of in terms of animals and my first instinct was bugs. From there, I let varying
elements of the two subjects I chose inspire me! Such as the branches for antenna and the length
of the planter getting me to imitate a centipede. Having a baseline idea while going into a design
makes sure you have a set track to stay on. I like my cute bugs. Now they look more like
branches coming off the top. Let the object inspire you, right. What is within the object? What do you see
when it comes to it, right? What's in a plant? Like okay, there's a ton of things that you
can do with effects. Effects is just like a very broad spectrum. So if I were to just create a
whole new layer. Let's say that I just filled this whole thing in orange. So if I just fill this in, I
can change this blending mode to like multiply so this would be like a multiply effect and it adds
on like another layer of colour. I could change it to overlay and that'll like make everything more -
actually, I kind of like the way that it looks! I might keep that. Let's just merge that down to my layer.
The second object was the spray bottle creature that I had a bit of eureka moment with.
Oh you know what I can do? Because there's a - yes,
okay I thought there's like I can attach like feet onto this the bottle can be its tank,
and the little spray thingy can be the rest of its body. Yes there we go, let's get it.
So it's almost like it's a little fish coming out of the tank you know and you can refill
the water. It needs water to survive, but it doesn't want to be submerged all the time.
It's like a plant. Sometimes, the weirdest and most out of the blue ideas can be your best
ones! If you have an idea, try it and see if you like it. If you don't, that's what erasers are for.
Yeah, it feels like a beak to me - like kind of like a duck, like a big duck.
You ever see that? Like if you look at a spray bottle now, you'll only see them as ducks.
I'm sorry I've ruined spray bottles for you all forever. Let me show you a different way to
shade, so this one was with just flat colours. So this one, I'm gonna use a multiply layer instead.
So I'm going to colour in everything dark blue. This is a really fast way to shade but it does have
its disadvantages. For right now, I'm thinking that my light source is coming from kind of over here.
So if my light is kind of coming from here then there'll be shadow on this side. But when
you have all this colour filled in, what you can do is on the side over here, you can see this -
it's on your layer window it says "Blending". Change your blending to multiply and you can
turn down the opacity - boom - quick shadows, easy! It has its disadvantages if you're going for
more advanced shading. You can't add subsurface scattering or anything like that,
because it doesn't really work with this. You're going to have to merge it all, and then figure it out.
It's like it's like a yarn ball, but like they converted it into a snail, like that's such a
fun design, I'm thinking that. I'm thinking like a washi tape snail.
I had a lot of fun doing these designs because they were so simple with the washi tape snails.
Sometimes with design, less is more! I was once told that when you put in too much detail it's
almost like you have no detail at all, because there's nowhere for your eyes to land on. This
is why all intricate designs need a resting spot, where there's points of low detail for your eyes
to find. But when you have designs as simple as this, you don't really need to worry about that.
Let's use my terrible three - my terrible dual pronged Cintiq cord, because I hate this thing.
I love the Cintiq but I just, I hate this cord. It's so intense and it's proprietary. It costs so
much to get. This back feels kind of like empty to me but like, I don't know what to put here.
I can give it some stickers, let's do that. Let's give it some like underwater things stickers for fun.
If I'm being honest, I struggled a bit with these designs because they all hit my weak point.
Every artist has a weakness, I think that like most artists
have some kind of weakness. Mechanics are mine.
I can draw you almost anything else, it's just mechanics that I think I am like so, so bad at. Like
I can't, I'm so bad at cars, I can't do airplanes, trains. Like can I do them? Yes. But it takes me an
endless amount of time. Like it takes me way longer, I'm so slow. Even though we all have weak points
that just means that we have to work extra hard at it to make it just as good as our strong points!
Have plenty of references handy, and your work will look far better than if you worked without one.
I like the glowy boys. I like how simple the Google Home is. It's just
a rectangle with legs, I kind of love it. If you want to watch this drawing
in real time, check out our livestream replay linked in the description down below.
I hope these tips can help you the next time you design and draw some cute creature designs.
If you enjoyed this video, here's a couple other videos you can check out next!