Continuing my Charles Eddison project i decided to come up with a few creature concepts, one idea been a carnivous prehistoric like fish. I thought this would be a good project to document too, to show the process of taking an idea from concept to final shot. I imagine the final concept to be something crossed between a pitbull, tiger and piranah, i want it to appear vicious and menacing, and maybe a little cute.

The first step is coming up with concepts, to begin with it's a good idea to source reference material, do a search on the web for images similar to the theme you're concepting, in this case i looked through a number of websites for pictures of fish. I don't limit myself to just photography, i look through existing artwork and concepts created by other artists, films, books, anything that can inspire your own design. Don't be afraid to use ideas created by others, it's not a good idea to copy someone elses work directly, but taking notes of how someone else might treat specific areas and using that to influence your own thoughts is good practice.

Surrounding yourself with inspiration will only fuel your own work, find as much as you can, even images that don't work, ask yourself why they dont work as well as others, use that to avoid the same mistakes.

Think about lighting, texture and silhouette. Looking through these references will allow you to get a feel for the forms, the weight, skin density and character; helping bring the final design to life.

To begin with i started creating a few quick sketches in photoshop, i had an existing idea in mind of the basic form and shape inspired by the references i found from the web.

I create a blank document and add a texture into the background, for me a white canvas is a little too harsh to work on so i always prefer to use something more midtone with a little texture. After creating a few rough sketches i soon came up with two interesting designs that caught my attention.

Pulling out one of the sketches i began to refine this further, adding in rough highlights and shadows. I then browse through cgtextures.com and start laying in textures to build up the skin. CGtextures has a large body of organic references for fish, mammals, plants etc. When designing a character don't restrict yourself to just using textures that are associated with the character at hand, lay in plants, flowers, clay, stone, wood; anything that has interesting texture can work in surprising ways.

The final concept gives me a base to work from. I should continue to do a front and top view, but for this one i feel i can be a little loose and pull out the rough shape in 3d using what i have.