There are two kinds of creatures that appear in ATLAND: Established and New. Established creatures are things from mythology like minotaurs or a dragons - accepted standards in fantasy fauna. For these animals, it's more a matter of putting my own spin on an common theme. Fun, but not as rewarding.

   The second type of creature is wholly new. Something I'm making from scratch that is new to ATLAND and hopefully, fantasy in general. If you're just going to stick to the standards found in your old D&D Monster Manual, then why bother?

   This article covers the thoughts behind, and sketch evolution of, one such monster. So without further ado, let's get crackin'.

   Let's face it, in any fantasy, everybody rides around on horses. Horses are great, noble animals. I like horses. But I was bored. Every time I wrote in a script that a character, "Rode into frame…" - it was on a horse. Ho hum.

   Why can't there be some alternative to the horse?

   That was the first spark of an idea. The next step was brainstorming and figuring out a starting point for my concept.

   Many concept artists find that looking for inspiration from real life animals is a great place to start, and I agree, as long as the end result is NOT the source material.

   On a morning walk one day I noticed a guy walking two dogs. One was a retriever mix that was pretty huge. The other was a rambunctious pug. As the retriever lumbered along, the pug would take a few steps ahead of him on his leash and then spin around and jump on his face! Apparently the retriever was used to this, as he seemed to tolerate the annoyance with resigned patience.

   I had my starting point. The goofy face of a pug, with the big body and even-temper of the retriever. When I got home I Googled "pugs" and started sketching. Most importantly that day, I found out that I suck at drawing pugs.

   Since I didn't want the animal to end up being too dog-like, I decided to find another creature that I associated with an even-temperment and large size. This led me to three more source animals: The camel, the tortoise and the brontosaurus. So now I had four concepts to mix and I started drawing some heads…

   They came out a little too goofy and a little too round…but I did discover that I liked the idea of a long chicken neck and nostrils set between the eyes and decided to hold on to those ideas as well. It was time to figure out what the body of this thing looked like. I decided it should be pretty large. It wouldn't be fast like a horse, but powerful; the ultimate pack animal. I came up with this:

   Not bad, but I wasn't happy that the head was looking too much like a tortoise. So I tried again and on this day I had a friend in the studio who offered some ideas as well. I ended up with this:

    · Getting there. The expression was just about right, and I liked the idea of having something on their heads, like a rooster comb, but I didn't like the front legs. I also thought the body was too dog-like. I also decided against a long, articulated tail at this point. Too cat-like.

   That week, I realized that this creature wouldn't be appearing in the episode of ATLAND that I thought it was going to (#74) but would have to premier later on. Episode 74 was just a month away and despite the fact that I had a character riding into the scene, it really made more sense that it should be a horse…so I put the whole project on hold to make room for designing things that would appear sooner than our creature.

   …I found the time to pick up the beast again. The break was actually refreshing. Most writers and editors will tell you that when you do a first draft that you should file it away for a little while and stop thinking about it before you edit. I find that's absolutely true even for artwork. It gives you a whole new perspective and a healthy enough detachment to make corrections that you might not otherwise have made.

   Soooo… it was back to the drawing board and I decided to work smart this time. At the top of my board I taped a scrap of paper with these notes:

   With these as my guide, along with the previous body of work, I grabbed a pencil and went to it. In a few hours of doodling I ended up with a bunch of head sketches. These were the best of the bunch:

   On that set of heads I particularly liked the heads on the far left and the far right. I also discovered that the facial structure of these guys didn't allow for much expression. That boxy jaw didn't allow for much stretching of the lips. The two middle sketches just don't do it for me. But so what? It might actually be funnier if these beasts have a constant look of mild disdain and boredom. They can put up with a lot of crap…until your back is turned and then they'd get even in some sneaky way. Like spit a big slimy wad of mucus at the back of your head.

   This is an important step in concept art…you start making up a story in your head. It gives your drawings more life.

   Then I went ahead and drew a skull based on those faces:

   A day later, I took my favorite head (on the far right) and finished a body for it:

   And I was happy. Essentially it's a dinosaur with the personality and all the features I wanted to capture. That was my beast. I scanned in a quick sketch of Barry and Photoshopped him in there to create a scale reference for myself.

   Just for fun I sketched out what a toddler might look like:

   Now it was time to do a final version. I broke out the inks and then scanned it into photoshop for some coloring. I ended up with this, the final spec image for all future drawings of these creatures:

   As of this writing, I still haven't come up with a name for these guys that I'm happy with, but by the time they appear I'm sure I'll have thought of something!

   Well, it's time to move on to the next concept project! I hope you've enjoyed the article. See ya soon.