#creating creatures

I do a lot of things when creating creatures.  I wanted to share some of these with you.

1)  The Purpose

My two main WIPs right now have two very different purposes for their animals.  Their Own Design focuses on practicality and reality.  Children of the Moon is much more emotion focused.

This means when creating animals for TOD, I’m looking for where the animal lives and what adaptations irl animals have for that environment.  I mix and match from there to create a living breathing animal that could exist on this Earth.

However, when creating animals for Children of the Moon, I’m hoping to evoke a certain feeling.  The Night Shade is an example of this.  I wanted something that would be purely terrifying.  So, I chose and animal that scare me and an animal that scares other people.  My two animals were a gulper eel and a barn owl.  I chose the parts of them that were most terrifying and combined them.  

From this I got what is essentially a giant flying gulper eel with the wings and coloring of a barn owl that has a voice very similar to a barn owl.  I blended the characteristics (going from slippery eel to feathery bird) by making it very smoky and less solid.  

2) Finding Inspiration

One of the best things for getting inspiration is too keep a file (whether irl or online) of animals you love, hate and find unique.  

For me, this means I keep a Pinterest of pictures to refer back to and a bunch of field guides.  Specifically, I like to keep books of fossils and mythological creatures.