I redrew my first monster from the other day

[capri0mni]

A ballpoint pen sketch of a monster with a vaguely (hairy) human torso, arms, and legs, a bird's head, and dragon's tail.

Because I was unhappy with its proportions, its pose, and its hands. All three of those things are now much more to my liking...

Comments

[raze]

A definite improvement, as far as I'm concerned. Love the designs of your monsters!

[capri0mni]

Thanks. Most of the improvement came, I think, from the fact that I drew it in the "coolth" of the evening (as my father would have said) instead of in the peak heat of the day when I could barely think straight.

I love coming up with monsters (or drawing the monsters that come to me). I love mixing the seemingly incongruous into a perfectly seamless Whole. I think my favorite monster is still this one, though, which I drew a couple of years ago:


(monster with the body of a snail, head of a gryphon, and tail of a dragon).

I even got that image printed onto a shirt (the one I happen to be wearing, now). The slogan reads: "In a Class of my Own (and Phylum, too)" ^_^

[pebblerocker]

I love its joins and transitions from one hide to another - the furry collar effect where the body joins the neck, the scaly tail (and spikes!) growing from the mammalian body, and especially the hairy ankles above the bare skin of the feet.

[capri0mni]

*nods*

Even though I haven't gone back and read the thesis "When a Knight meets a Dragon-Maiden" in depth, since I started writing my poem responses to it (I should! It's on my to-read list), one phrase the writer uses in reference to monsters (I think quoting Medieval writers/philosophers) is "The difficult middles" -- those precise points where things that shouldn't match up, do -- like where the Chimera's "goat head" grows from the middle of her lion-back (Photo of Chimera in Bronze, from Wikipedia), or where a gryphon's eagle legs grow from the lion's torso, or the point where a satyr goes from goat to human. As soon as I saw that phrase, a little bell rang in my head that this is exactly why monsters have always fascinated me...

...And just as I start a meandering ramble into the land of "teal deer," I realize this probably deserves a journal entry all its own.

Meanwhile, there's a more mundane reason why this creature has the fur pattern it does: there is an "art bunny" (kissing cousin to the plot bunny) hopping around in my head right now for making more YouTube storytelling videos with still pictures (a few might be August Art projects-- and I might want to use my monster drawings as "actors." Since my monsters are "wild animals," it struck me as rather silly to dress them in clothes, a la Beatrix Potter or Walt Disney, but on the other hand, I could very well get my videos flagged as "inappropriate" if I drew a human-like torso without covering it in something. So I gave it fur... and I "just happened" to make the silhouette of the fur match up with human clothing styles...

[pebblerocker]

I look forward to reading your further thoughts on the matter. "The difficult middles" -- a useful phrase!

Have pinpointed the reason for my enjoyment of the monster's ankles: furry legs with hairless feet is the way many humans look (or would naturally look) but there's a taboo against depicting them that way. I like this monster because it has hands and arms like mine, and legs and feet like mine, but its face is nothing like mine except in its expression, which means I can identify with it more strongly than with a character whose face is... hmmm... human-as-others-see-it and unlike my self-image. I hope I make any sense at all here!

[capri0mni]

I think I know what you mean:

So often, deliberately anthropomorphic cartoon animals seem to be drawn with an exaggerated fill-in-the-blank formula (substituting iconic versions human features for animal ones), with the goal of making the character appealing to one emotion.

And what you end up with is a "flat" character that has no feel of emotional reality.