From the course: The Monster Drawing Workshop

Sketching monster ideas

From the course: The Monster Drawing Workshop

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Sketching monster ideas

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- This first stage is Sketching Monster Ideas. So you now have 10 minutes. Grab the white paper in front of you, you can use a pen or pencil, and begin working out your ideas of what you want to create. Remember, anything goes at this stage, if you're not sure it's going to work, don't worry about it. It's all about working through all the bad ideas until you discover that one idea that's going to work. For those of you watching at home, make sure to watch this complete movie, then pause it, then you take 10 minutes and draw out your thumbnail sketches. As you're drawing out your character, really consider the perimeter shape. The more interesting the shape, the more interesting the character. If you cut out a circle, it's just a circle. But if it has horns, or it has strange looking ears or appendages, it's going to make the character more interesting, so take that into consideration as you're drawing. This is the kind of thing where you could do his body, this background on one piece, this could be a separate piece and it just kind of sits out. By the way, this might be really intimidating for some of you, don't worry about it. My wife did this and she does not draw, she does not do artwork, and she did a pretty cool looking octopus lady. So if my wife can pull it off, I'm sure you guys could pull it off. We have a couple of minutes left. You want to make sure at this stage you've captured the essence of your idea, that you know with clarity what you want to do moving forward, so you know what you're going to be creating. You don't have to have all the details and specifics dialed in, but you do want to have the general idea firmly established. This is the end of the sketching stage. Now when I did my thumbnail sketches, the thumbnail that I settled on was this guy, he's going to end up having six arms. I initially thought he'd hold a skull, but I decided I'm probably not going to do that, and I kind of worked out how his legs are going to work. Now this is a forward facing figure and this was the other guy I'm going to create, I'm not sure what he is, he's just kind of a weird-eyed worm-looking dude and I want to have wings on him eventually. This is all I did at this stage, that's why I'm saying it's about capturing the essence of the idea, not so much the specifics of the shape and form. You're going to have time to draw that out as we move forward.

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