In week 1, we were put into small groups and tasked to come up with 100 ideas based around creating a world.  I was with Megan McColm, Fionnuala Kelly, Ben McPeak and Chloe Bowman.  We used a cloud-based collaboration tool called Miro to write down and share ideas within our group.   

 

 

 This software was a great way to come together and bounce ideas off one another.  We ended up having a few different in-depth ideas which made it very hard to narrow down and choose a specific one since each had its own unique appeal.  

Eventually we all settled on the idea of having separate areas in the same world linked together.  Each section of the world would have a different atmosphere with different inhabitants.  One of our, still undecided, ideas was to have some sort of laboratory situated in one of the darker and more harsh segments of the world.  We then settled on the idea of having the characters as hybrid animals, however this then led to another obstacle – how and why do the hybrid animals exist?   

We decided it was best to go away and each come up with a few ideas to resolve this and then call again a day later.  My suggestion was to have Gods who watched over each individual segment – One of these Gods would have built up an anger while watching the animals mix and interbreed and was disgusted.  The God viewed them as being impure and set out to build this laboratory in his segment to create his own army of sorts, which hoped to cleanse the world of these ‘traitors’ or impurities.  The dwellers of each area of the world would then have to come together to intercept this. 

However, after hearing Megan’s idea, we chose to work with that as everyone liked it and it seemed like something that could potentially be very engaging.  It will be set on future earth and the laboratory will be the main plot focus.  The hybrids in this lab will then try to escape.  This laboratory may be the reason they are hybrids in the first place. 

I created a Pinterest board to explore this idea more and try and find inspiration for my character designs as well as the landscape.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/SamanthaSavage_/hybrid-animal-world/

 

 

Chasing Hearts Regular

 

We each designed our own hybrid animal characters to fit into this world.  I wanted to try and keep my hybrids relatively normal and not something completely absurd.  I created a few, some more bizarre than others, and eventually decided on two: A Ram-Rooster and a Lion-Deer. 

Here is a mood board showing the references I used when designing the Ram-Rooster.

 

 

 

This has the torso of a ram and the wings and head of a rooster.  I had originally planned to combine this with a peacock and give it an elegant fan tail, but decided it then looked like one of those mix and match kids toys you get in waiting rooms. 

It’s definitely an odd combination, but I like the way it turned out. 

 

Here is my second mood board with the references I used when creating the Lion-Deer hybrid mix.

 

 

This is my favourite of the two as it looks a little more natural.  It has the body of a lion and the head of a deer.  This means that the hybrid is as strong and powerful as a lion and has the addition of sturdy antlers to help it during head to head fights.  The males will have lots of fur around their chest and neck area, where on a female there will be sleeker hair. 

I also came up with some cringey names for their species that probably won’t stick… A Deerlon and a Ramster. 

 

I’m fairly new to digital art and so I had to watch a few videos before starting to create these characters.  Some of the videos I found really helpful went through how to draw clean lines instead of my usual unsure feathered strokes.

 

 

 

When I applied the techniques showed in these videos to my work when finalising my hybrid animal sketches, I feel like they looked far cleaner and easier to understand.