Creature Design – Slimy Cliff Jumper

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Creature Design of the Week

One of my very early creature designs of the week entries for conceptart.org. This particular entry was for the topic “Slimy Cliff Jumper”. Not a very good creature design, but it was one of the first I ever created so it was bound to be rough.

This was pretty much a speed painting and there are many things I would do differently now. It is often hard to look back on things you have created in your past, even if it was just 2 years ago, as in the interim you learn and improve, some times drastically. Creature design relies on deep knowledge of actual living beings, which I have from many years as a medical illustrator, and a vivid imagination with a willingness to distort beyond believable, and the talent to make it still appear real.

Why Creature Design?

Because I love to imagine new things, and a creature allows a whole world to start to appear in my mind. Starting with an environment doesn’t give me the same thrill, but starting with a creature design, I have a living thing to play with… Character design is in that same camp, and in some ways an even more definable world with props and structures, vehicles, weapons, cultural motives etc are all possible. All of these additional things are also what makes character design harder for me than creature design. Not to mention that in creature design you do not have to worry about them being anthropomorphic, which I find very limiting.

Creature Design Critique

Looking back at this image I see many things I would correct. The mouth/head are not interesting enough, nor are they in any way showing emotion or action. The head should be rotated down to look as if it is about to attack the prey. The “feet” should have been exaggerated much more, they don’t do much in the way of implying a “controlled decent”. The knuckles, joints etc, need to be corrected to make them more “real”. The tail, man I have ideas for the tail NOW. When I did this creature design, I was just interested in the x shape and the color palette. Now I imagine the tail as a series of tentacles to help grab the prey from behind while the head comes in for the kill. Get rid of the claws and feet suckers, they serve no purpose in this creature design, it would need it’s feet out to keep “gliding” while it uses it’s head and tail to control the prey.

The prey itself is another opportunity for a creature design. The cycle I saw here was this the green globules are a plant filled with hydrogen that float around peacefully photosynthesizing. They should also be more interesting themselves. These plants are consumed by the “grub” form of the cliff jumper, which uses the hydrogen as part of an “explosive” jet out of it’s rectum that launches it at it’s next meal of plant blobs. The adult slimy cliff jumpers are partially cannibalistic and often eat the grub form.

Creature Design Resources:

Creature of the Week contest at ConceptArt.org

CreatureSpot.com

Aaron Sims Creature Design DVD’s – I LOVE these!

My Creature Design posts here on c-hammer.com

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