Bobby Chiu

Bobby Chiu is an artist from Toronto, Canada. He started his career at 17 designing licensed toys for Disney and Pixar. As the head of Imaginism Studios, Bobby's clients now include TV and movie production companies.

I found Bobby Chiu's work inside ImagineFX magazine, the work that greeted me was the rabbit eating monster, I loved this piece, made me laugh because of how simple the design was but the character is brilliant and is a great reference to what I want to do.

Along with the Rabbit eating monster, another creature that stood out was the moth-monster (top left picture) the details of the fur on this creature is great and the creatures expression is brilliant, certainly made me chuckle. 

Jordi Gonzales

I found Jordi Gonzales via ImagineFX. What stood out to me was how life like his creatures were, especially how he has got the creatures muscles, and bodily features very life like.

To achieve the life like appearance, Jordi Gonzales researched and observed real creatures to gain the muscles correct appearance.

Creaturebox

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Monsters/3647101

The artist found here is named "Creaturebox" which looking at his projects, I can clearly see why he's named himself so.

 The images above are from a project named "Monsters" here he has created a series of monsters that are based on the tales of monsters living underneath your bed. The weird design works well with the selected characters, as you could easily see them being monsters that would live under your bed, and its aim to scare kids is achievable, but I think thanks to the colour choices they may not.

The colour choices aswell are another bonus to these characters, just goes to show that monsters don't have to be dull dark characters.

Vladimir

http://www.behance.net/gallery/CEPHALOPODOPTERA/4821555

Another artist I found on Behance. The project that I've nabbed some pictures from is called "Cephalopodoptera". This project is all about a newly discovered species that are a link between Molluscs and insects. I found the images on this project to be very inspiring and give me a new insight into how other people connect random animals together, with surprising outcomes, that work out really well, and quite believable.

Vladimir did another project which is quite similar to the previous project, where this time he has done the same thing as before but instead of Molluscs, he has utilised marine creatures with insects, and once again the outcomes are very bizarre creatures that work surprisingly well, esp the squid snail creatures.

Nicholas Kole

  http://www.behance.net/gallery/Project-Copernicus/5954949

I found this artist on the website Behance. The images above are concept idea's for a game called : 'Copernicus'.

What struck me the most about these images were the way how he has developed a monster from originating animals that inhabit this world which as you can see above, are animals such as whales, Octopus's and Moths, have been cleverly moulded and edited into becoming monsters, which work out really well, this has given me the idea of maybe basing a lot of my monsters on animals that exist in our world, and turn them into weird whacky characters.

Ni No Kuni Wizard Companion Guide Book

The image above is a photo of the wizard companion guide, for the computer game "Ni No Kuni". The reason I took a picture of this book, is to gain evidence and more references to see how other people layout there books and what works, and what doesn't. 

Apart from the fact its in Japanese, I feel this page layout works pretty well, quite simple and I quite like the tea stained coloured background. There isn't much lettering going on the page, only a few sentences  that I guess describes the character features, its attack moves, what it likes dislikes etc.

I probably won't do a series of images on the same character but I do like how the tea stained background works with the images, I may use that in my future page layouts.


The images below are from the actual game Ni No Kuni, here you can see the character you wish to read up on, its powers and health etc.
This is quite a useful find as again the layout is simple enough for people to read all the info the need to know about this character.

Rob Steen - Flanimal

Above are the images from the popular children's book series "Flanimals". The "Flanimals" themselves are quite simple designed characters that do the job for a children's book. But what I'm looking for is how these book series lay out their pages individually, and as you can see from the above image, its layout is very simple, with a plain white background , the layout doesn't look anything special, but it works well with the image and the shape and size of the pages. I'm not a massive fan of the blank white page, blank white pages drive me made, as I have the need to fill them in with colour or some form of a background, so the white background approach will not be used on my final image.

The one thing I do like with this page layout is the false latin abbreviation of the character, the latin names are comical and probably stand out the most thanks to the use of italic font on the latin wording.

Brian Froud

Recently we had a lecture from the man himself, which was very insightful and quite entertaining. After being shown his work, I was inspired and impressed by the rang of creatures that Brian has done during his career as an illustrator, esp the facial expressions of his faeries and trolls.

Moshi Monster

Moshi Monster pretty much inspired me to create a Monster Fun Fact book. The global success of this product is amazing, esp. how it came out of nowhere, and now you can't enter a shop without seeing at least one bit of Moshi Monster merchandise.
The monsters themselves are very simple creatures, but are very cutesy which appeals to children so well, and the mixture of the colour as well gives these characters more added appeal to the children, the monsters won't be considered to be works of art, but the fact that they are solely aimed at children makes the fact that their simple and colourful approach works tremendously well.

While researching into Moshi Monsters, I had a look at the Encyclopedia of the Moshi Monster world, and I decided to see how the page layouts has been designed and how they work. Looking around the pages your eyes are already attracted to the colourful background and of course to the colourful characters. The layout has quite a bit of text going on, on the page with the one random fact box that states a fun fact about the creature. The name of the monster is displayed boldy on the top of the page, the text works well with the character because its bold and bubbly/cartoony abit like the characters its describing.

This technique could be used on the characters whenever I have designed them.

Monster Hunter

Never played the game before but borrowed this book of a classmate and was once again amazed at the concept artwork for each of the Monsters that make an appearance in the game. In this book there is quite a large and varied range of monsters, that go from Goblins - Dragons - Cat - like warriors.

Among the creatures are certain species that are heavily based on real life creatures, such as the dragon image above, is majorly based on a Cat, which you can clearly see by the portrayal of the character (crouched down ready to pounce on a prey)

Tony Diterlizzi - Spiderwick Field Guide

Recently I came to acquire Tony Diterlizzi's Spiderwick's - Field Guide.
This book is full of amazing illustrations all based on the creatures that make an appearance in the book series. Already heavily influenced by Tony's work, this book will help inspire to give me idea's on proposed characters that I'll create as well creating mythical monsters that people know and love or detest.
Along with the drawings, the pages layouts are great. What makes them so great is the random sketch's of the creatures body parts, and the handwritten explanations on the creatures aswell, and the tea stained background (or old sketch paper texture) as the background is a great mixture between all the elements on the page.

Mind Map - Ideas

My two idea's for this final project are stated above. The main project that will probably take all of my time will be the Monster Fun Fact book for kids, as I aim to create a number of other items alongside the book, the main aim to do with this is show people and would be employers that I am capable of creating more then just books and characters, and it'll help boost my portfolio with some much needed contextual items. The monsters will be based on real life creatures, and some legends from other cultures such as Greece, Egyptian gods, British mythology, South American legends etc. The age range and targeted audience is 6-9, i feel my art work fits well into this category and it's market area I'll like to go into after education.

The second project will be the continuation of my Horde Of Hamsters project that I had started during the first term of this year. But after show casing the characters during a presentation I received some vital feedback about how all the characters looked the same and that they weren't showing any characteristics details, so this time round I want to edit the characters and give them the needed emotions and features that make them distinguished from the other hamsters. During this project I'll be researching certain films that have a cast of characters whose appearance already describe what their character details are, so for example: The Hobbit - The dwarf Dwalin appears very hardcore and heavily weaponised - thus stating that Dwalin is a hard fighter and a natural warrior compared to the other dwarves in Thorin's company.