The Five Questions for Creature Design

I've invented a lot of creatures over the years - each one more different than the last - but no matter what they were, I've always focused on answering Five Basic Questions for each one. These questions help me to identify the appropriate references, convey a sense of realism and fabricate a creature that's both visually memorable and emotionally impactful. I hope you learn something in this video, which is itself a short excerpt from my tutorial "Chimaera: A Creature Design Masterclass."

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE, RING THE BELL, and LEAVE A COMMENT - I want to hear from you! Tell me how you find me, what inspires you, and what you'd like to see from me next.

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[jordu]

We haven't met, Jonah, but I am a creature designer as well, (My name is Jordu Schell) and I think this video is amazing. You put so succinctly the elements of creature design---and what REALLY matters---that I will recommend this video to all of those who come to me asking about how to do what I do. Excellent.

[Voondubah]

"Animals, every one of them, down to the tiniest, most horrid looking, are gifts.." PREACH QUEEN

[Duck-cxqo]

Wait hold you designed creatures from both Skyrim and fallout?! Dude that's amazing and to be honest those games are what got me to start learning how to draw creatures. Especially the Deathclaw! I love your work and cant wait to be at your skill one day!

[susansan]

I can add another question! :)

How does this creature survive? How does it get food? How does it reproduce? Where is it's natural habitat?

There are wasps that use spiders as live incubators, parasites and fungus, that can control the mind of their host. Some ants cultivate a fungus that they feed on. Some spiders use pheromones to lure moths to it's web. An octopus use camouflage to get close to prey. A chameleon can use their colour to communicate. A male angler fish bites into a female and fuse, in order to reproduce. Birds can use sound to mark territory.

[sharksuperiority]

Monster hunter’s character design has always been some of my favourite. The realism is something I’ve always loved in design, grounding the creatures in a world makes it feel more real, and more like a place you could actually be. It also hints at more scientific details which as a science nerd always makes me happy

But further than that the monsters in MH are iconic and frankly awesome. Like I’m sure no one will ever forget Brachydios’s Explosive slime attacks, or Glavenus’s crazy tail.

[solstice]

i dont understand how this guy doesnt have millions of views, its like im in an actual design class.

[MrBlorp-sfye]

Now I understand why I so love the design I did for this one character

He is a treant - an elder treant, to be precise. In the lore I made up for treants of my world, the older they got, the more human they looked. This treant, Bristlebeard, was about 1000 years old, so he looked fairly human.

The words that rang in my mind while designing him were durable, rugged, slow, and wise. Durable was easy enough, since he was basically a tree-man thing. For rugged, gave his bark strong and rough texture, and made his leaf hair tough and bristly, and made his body parts quite a bit jagged around the edges. For slow, I gave him oversized fert and fists, making him look slow from first glance. I also hunched his back over, and gave him branches that expand into full trees on his back. He was massive, so this wasn't a problem for him.

For wise, I went with the ol' reliable old man look. Wrinkly face, bags under his eyes. The works. I also gave him golden glowing eyes, as well as long swooping eyebrows, kind of like some owls, as well as how some wise old man type characters are portayed in media. And you can never forget the grand beard.

Silhouette-wise, he truly did appear slow and durable. His color scheme and details made him appear old, rugged, and wise.

I wasn't aware of it while creating him, but this video enlightened me to what I loved so much about Bristlebeard.

This was an amazing video, and a great eye opener.

[Frenchiezy]

The feral ghouls from Fallout 3 are forever stuck with me. That was my first fallout game and they absolutely terrified me, great work on them!

[suzerainty]

I got halfway through this video before I realized I had to start over from the beginning and take notes! This was extremely helpful. Creature design was so directionless for me but I feel way more prepared now that I can start to approach it in a focused way

[edwardteach]

Avatar (James Cameron) heavily inspired me to do creature designs after watching it (a dozen times) when I was a kid. I don't really care what everyone's criticism was about the movie itself, but man, the creatures and the worldbuilding aspect of it is just amazing.

[TamTroll]

By studying humans and starfish for a race of humanoids descended from starfish, I realized that their hands and feet likely wouldn't resemble our own, both due to the starfish's five-way symmetry, and the fact that the creature never experienced an arboreal state of living.

Figure the hands might look loosely like our own, but wit the pinky replaced with a second thumb, and the feet might be slightly rounder, with three toes in the front and two near the back, or to the sides like the hand's thumbs. They live in the desert, so i think i need to study camel feet, and other desert-dwelling creatures for some more ideas there.

[purplehaze]

Wow, I had no idea the creature designer for Skyrim and the last few fallout games had a YouTube channel. Very insightful! I’ll be sure to apply this advice to the demons in my circles of hell.

[SkellyBobRoss]

I'm revisiting this video again. I can't thank you enough for the wealth of help these five questions have been to my own character designs.

[sugarcoated]

I just want to say that I absolutely adore your work in Fallout especially, and I'm a huge fan. Contrary to what another commenter said, I absolutely agree that your Deathclaw redesign for Fallout 4 was a massive improvement over your Fallout 3 version in terms of design and movement. It was a far more readable and believable apex predator, although the Fallout 3 version still holds a fond place in my memories.

I'm a Foundation art student in the UK, and I've been working through your content to inform my final major project on creature/monster design. I'm going into an undergrad in comic & concept art next year and I feel like I've gained an enormous amount of inspiration to follow this path through my love of characters like the ones you helped bring to life. I'm so inspired by your videos, the Fallout 4 art book in which your work features, and I just wanted to say thank you for what you make!

Thank you so much for this advice! I don't know if you've answered this in a video I haven't gotten to yet - but do you have any advice on creating cohesion between different creature designs within the same world? I've been thinking about biological adaptions in response to a predator/prey scenario, but I feel like my designs can look out of place together. Maybe this could be the topic of another video if you haven't covered it yet? :)

[josesatorre]

Thank you for this absolutely wonderful video! As a young artist, dreaming to become a game artist, this video is very useful and inspiring for me! Thank you very much for all the art and the advices you share!

[ichimatsu]

This is incredibly useful even as a writer, I can use these concepts to help bring to life some of my creatures on the page. Thank you!

[TheAngelArrow]

wtf why does this guy only have 11k subs? this guy is giving nuts info & guidance, too underrated it's actually insane how underrated this is, so happy i found this

[SuperGoose]

Never heard of this channel, this video randomly popped into my feed, but as a writer and D&D dungeon master, this video is exactly what I've been needing for months.

[F_NerdShark]

Okay all 5 questions AND the ones that @Susansan suggested because I really liked it:
* Where does it survive? (Reproduction, food, predators, etc)
* What is its personality? (Where did it come from? What’s its heritage? Focus on silhouette)
* Use animal references!
* Colour and patterns (simplicity is the key! Bright: tropical earthy: natural pale: unnatural dark: mystery or power Pink: raw and tender flesh: uncanny valley shine or matte/roughness or sliminess)

[RoboLamp]

The creature icons in the thumbnail are absolutely stunning