Designing Unrealistic Animals

walk - attack- turn

SO I wanted to start off by talking about the more 'abstract' animal designs. These are one of the reasons I am working on an independent game. I love designing animals that don't make sense, That won't necessarily 'work' in our world with bright colors and physics breaking anatomies. I love to design animals on a more visual basis than a practical one.

Now, any project I work on that has some basis in our world, I do A LOT of research on before I finalize anything. I find the more you find out about something, the more ideas you get to abstract from. Since this game is about adapting to different environments (I will post more about what the game actually is later) I researched animal/plant evolution and adaptation, learning why different animals have evolved to be what they are. I then started designing very practical animals that could survive in our earth. But I then had to step back, and remember why I wanted to make my own game in the first place. I wanted to step away from the cliche monsters seen in most AAA games, star trek aliens with human like bodies but with four arms, color pallets ranging from dark green to brown. work on designs a mainstream game company would probably not allow, which brings me back to this guy.

 A cubist body and limbs with a cloud coming out of its back that floats through the air and propels its self with its limbs even though they are not attached to its body. I drew it, liked the drawing, so then I animated it. Now, a lot of my monsters are more practical that this, but I try to step away from that as much as possible. the more strange and complicated a design, the harder it is to figure out how they move, and the more time consuming their animation becomes. But I still try to make them as much as possible, keeping in mind reasons I want to work on an independent project, and appreciating all the freedom that doing so brings- Sasha