Another good part of Anthony Jones Creature Design course was his voice. I really enjoyed the deep sound as one hears it during the course for many many hours and so a pleasant voice is clearly a plus point.

Lesson 5 – Posing and Fitting in an Environment

In this lesson the task was to take our most favourite creature so far and put it into an environment. I first did some fast scribbles and then decided to try out two variations in a bigger scale with more details. With the first environment I wanted to put the dragon into a lurking position, waiting to attack some sleeping prey animals. I liked this position but decided later that there would be too much information, stealing the attention of the viewer from the actual design focus: the dragon. In the second position I more clearly put the dragon into the center, just adding a river underneath and some suggested mountains at the side. During the lesson Anthony reminded on the fact, that the creature always should fit into its environment and thus be able to move in it and adapt to its characteristics.

Lesson 6 – Color and Patterns

In lesson 6 Anthony talked about the illusion of color and value and how a good balanced grayscale picture is the most important part to give a clear description of the depicted figure. The final assignment for this part was to paint different animals with special regard to their individual color schemes and patterns. For the frog I’ve created a new brush to simplify the creation of the skin with all the small and big spots.

Lesson 7 – Coloring Our Creature / Lesson 8 – Finalizing

In those two lessons the final painting of the dragon began to improve. First some color was added to the chosen grayscale version of the dragon from lesson 5. Then some details and subtleties were added to make it more believable and natural. Anthony always reminded on the fact that the main focus while painting should always be to make the readability of the picture as clear as possible.

Lesson 9 – Closing Thoughts and Motivation

During the final lesson Anthony talked again about the industry in general and gave some tips on how to become successful as a character designer. For the final painting I’ve decided to change the background as the river was taking too much attention away from the dragon sitting on his ledge. With the new size and surrounding I felt like I’ve succeeded in making it more clear and readable.

My final score was:

If you want to take the course, or some of the other great courses they offer, you can click on this link to get yourself a little discount and me some extra money for my next course too. 😮