Drawing existing animals is one thing and can be tricky enough, but if you want to build up something from scratch, something that is not existing in our world and never existed, that is a real challenge. Most of the times the problem is with fan-made creatures that they are not believable, not realistic and many times it seems an impossible task to make them appear just right, so others look at this creature and believe they are part of the world they are existing in.
Planning
One of the main mistake you can make with fantasy creatures is you are trying to wing it, because the creature you are working on is not part of our world and never was you think you have no back up resources, so you have to make everything on your own. But this is simply not true! You are from planet Earth and everything you create is heavily influenced by the environment you live in and the people who will look at your creature have exactly the same background. Therefore you are surrounded with tons of resources: called animal kingdom.
When you are about to create your own creature, there are some decisions that will help you to put your creature on a more solid ground.
Questions like:
Land - Air - Water: Does your creature live in land, water or can fly?
Carnivore - Herbivore: Meat eater or plant lover?
Small - Medium - Large: How big it is?
Earthling - Alien: Mixed from Earth critters or your creature is out of this planet?
Habitat: Which climate your creature lives in? Topical or dry or very watery, like swamps or maybe freezing, etc.
With making these simple decisions you already have tons of information and you did not even pick your pencil up yet!
For Earth-based creatures you can grab stocks as well which will also help you a lot to put two or more animals together. The Alien version has more loose rules, still a good anatomy knowledge is required - if you know how Earth anatomy works, it will be easier to come up with something that can be possible and also believable.
I worked on a very interesting project DnD project, where the creature's concept were already existing, I needed to put the correct anatomy together and that critter fits this theme perfectly, so let me introduce you...
The Voles
So, let's see what we have here: what voles are? Lemme grab our list and go trough it with the voles:
Land - Air - Water: Voles are land creatures.
Carnivore - Herbivore: Mainly carnivore, they hunt on other small animals, but they also have molars, so they are kinda omnivorous.
Small - Medium - Large: Voles are in the medium DnD size class.
Earthling - Alien: Earthling, voles are the mixture of a wolf, sheep and rooster.
Habitat: Voles live in a warm climate.
What kind of information this list gives to me? Voles don't have wings - this means their bones are cored, not light, because voles do not need to be able to fly high in the sky. They also don't need huge chest muscles at all. I also got the extra information of voles are also four legged creatures, so no extra limbs (this information comes from the client).
Their teeth have the same logic as ours. Humans are also omnivorous creatures, so we have teeth to tear meat apart, but also have molars to deal with plant based food. The same applies to the voles.
Medium sized animals, got the extra information of they are fast and agile hunters.
Earthling: Mixture of real animals, my refs are basically wolves, sheep and roosters.
Warm climate as home: voles do not have long fur, they don't need a winter coat or drastically seasonal coat change.
My additional extra information were: voles are the apex predators of their world, super intelligent. There is no size difference between the males and females- however the females do have some secondary hair. Both males and females have a mane, their coat is curly, like a sheep's and they have rooster legs. Ever since I knew they are agile predators and do hunt and speed is their main hunting asset, I dropped in the idea of wolfhounds: wolves are fast, but they are endurance runners, they can run for miles. They also hunt for big prey, they need to be strong to bring down an elk. If voles are faster than them and also hunt on smaller preys than them, using their claws to kill the prey, that means they are more leaner than wolves, because everything is built in them for speed. The owner agreed, so in my head voles were pushed from bulky to more athletic body.
This is a ton of information and I did not even see the concept sketches, but I already had some ideas what voles are and how they look like. Then I got the concept ideas and this image became more clearer. The client already had an idea of the their creature looks like, they just did not know how to put them on paper realistically, how their anatomy would work and this commission was about building up the voles correct and believable anatomy using all the information I learned and my real animal refs.
I started at the base: the skeleton. Voles being quadrupedal animals makes things easier: quadrupeds have very similar anatomy, doesn't matter if we talk about a horse or a rat - if you look at their skeletons and muscles, they are not so different. Of course there are differences, like horses have some extra neck muscles and rats missing hooves and having paws, but their structure is the same and their main muscle groups are also the same.
But of course the devil hides in the details: I know canines are walking on their toes: their wrist is high above the paws and then comes the section that builds up our palms: the bones of the hand and then the fingers are the next. Kinda the same happens in their hind legs: ankle, then feet bones and finally the toes and they walk on their toes, not on their whole feet. Chickens have a similar concept thankfully and putting the rooster legs on hind canine legs was kinda easy-peasy. Things got a bit trickier when I had to deal with a wrist, which is way more flexible than an ankle. Roosters don't have wrist on their legs, so this was a moment when decisions had to be made: I have decided to keep the wrist - obviously - then keep the metacarpus as well and then bye doggo toes, hello chimken toes!
Another anatomical challenge was the headshot with an open mouth. First and foremost I needed to decide how big this creature can open its mouth. On the client's sketches, I saw these predators have huge mouth that runs right into the cheek. There you can find muscles and I couldn't get rid of the muscles, because they are must-haves for a working jaw. So I kept the mouth as it is only an opening in the skin and the mouth's main job is to let the jaw open at a spectacular angle. If only we would know an animal that was able to do that, right? Thylacines, you are my guy! I started to go after archive footage of thylacine yawning and they were base for the open mouth anatomy. Also kept the canine cheekbones, because, for a jaw like this, I needed muscle power and those muscles needed the bone structure to be attached. This slightly changes the sheep's head silhouette, because sheep don't have that prominent cheekbone - even though they also have jaw muscles because as herbivores they chew a lot, but eating grass requires less force than catching live prey, killing it then tearing raw meat off of the bones and/or snap bones in half. But keeping the main sheep features was also requested, so I skipped the typical canine angle that happens on the skull as the top of the head slowly goes into the nose bridge and kept the original sheep nose and eyes structure. This means voles' eyes sitting on the side, not on the front - which is not favourable for a predator, but the client's request means evolution is not perfect.
The skeleton part wasn't in the request, but it helped my work and if I drew it anyway I added it to the sheet. I really enjoyed working on the skull, because that is the body part where the sheep and wolf really mixing together - even if they both have four legs, so their body anatomically is similar, but they do have very different skulls, because of their different lifestyles. Preserving sheep features was priority - specifically asked - but it need to be changed for the predatory traits to show. Such as the cheekbones, but kept the overall sheep skull form and noise construction. Also changed the bottom jaw and gave more predator traits to it to attach properly to the new cheekbone.
Did you notice on the first page of vole anatomy the withers? Canines do not have such massive withers - herbivores have it usually. Why? Because many herbivore species have antlers or simply big heads. If the head or something on the head is big and heavy, then it needs the extra support: it needs massive muscles to support the head.
On the client's sketches, I noticed voles have massive withers - the reason behind that usually is to give more space to the big muscles to attach, so this means voles also have a massive, but short neck and a heavy head. Also means voles head going forward, not upward. They can raise their heads if they want to, but their basic head position is going forward. I gave voles big spine spikes to let all those muscles comfortably attach and build up and a nice, but short neck.
And ever since voles are agile and fast predators, they got long legs and a big chest with big shoulders. Big lungs and rib cage mean more oxygen and a bigger heart, long legs mean speed, and massive shoulder means more pulling force when they run. Their hindquarters are also muscular, they can push their bodies forward effectively. And their claws can dig into the ground: these guys won't slip when sprinting. Their tail - which kept its wolf features - can help them in turns, but they won't go spectacularly well in sharp turns - for that they'd need a bigger and heavier tail.
Coat wasn't requested to be shown, because the main point was the anatomy and the client wanted to see muscles and muscle lines, so the wool coat is missing on purpose.
Building up creatures is not that difficult after all!
No, it really is not, on the contrary: it is a lot of fun! You can go trough the whole process easily by answering some basic questions and using some references and anatomical knowledge. My go to advice are:
Always go trough that list, because the more you know about your creature the more realistic you can make it! Their lifestyle, their environment has a vital role in how they look like!
If your creature is based on Earth-animal or they are aliens, but inspired by Earth-animals then use your references! To be honest, I'd use a ton of deep sea creature for alien creatures, if nothing else, then as inspiration - deep-sea creatures are already looking like creepy aliens, they are great for inspirational purposes!
Have some basic knowledge of anatomy or if you don't, then use various anatomy charts! If your creature is mixed of 2-3 animals, like the voles are then use those animals anatomy charts to help you putting them together logically. The stronger your fundamentals, the better your creature will be and everything starts at the skeleton. You build your creature up to that skeleton, put that together well and you are halfway there.
If you really wanna be thorough and as realistic as you can be, then go after some biological knowledge - the more you know about biology, the better creatures you will build up. It is not only about bones and muscles, but it is also about colors, movement, behavior patterns. If your creature lives in a tropical environment, chances are they are very colorful! If they live in a desert, they are probably sand colored to blend in the environment and also stops them being overheated. They probably rather active at night or sunrise and sunset, because of the temperature during daytime. All these information help you to shape your creature to fit your chosen environment and also role you want to give to your creature. If they are a speedy predator they will have a different body building than a slower predator.
I hope this post helps you to create your future fantasy critters or inspires you to give them a try! Feel free to leave a Heart on this post or ask something in the comments. I'd also very much appreciate it if you would share this blog post around, may it helps out others as well! :3
Cheers,
Moc
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