Aug. 25th 08' UPDATED : 4 Critters + Sketch Concepts

[Quinn Simoes]

Hi Mike.

First off, your creature designs are extremely pro, those b&w sketches in post #6 are amazing. Although you have pointed out yourself that you need to work on your human anatomy and I would tend to agree. My only crit so far is in the first two drawings in post #7, the characters seem off balance as if they were falling backward, although I don't see any of this in the thumbnails below them, they look great!

I will be back for more inspiration, as I strive to improve my own creature designs, thanks for sharing!

Quinn

[Justin.]

Hey Mike! Great to see some of your sketches. I love your creature lines.

I do want to make a comment- it seems like you always use this "white-washy" yellow light source, and I can't quite tell because I'm on a laptop, but it looks like both your blue shadows and yellow lights are both desaturated. Maybe push one towards very heavy Saturation.. as David always says, "You have to break your fucking image to get it to work.." break your shapes, break your color, break your mood, etc... I don't have a wacom with me, but I'll see if I can do a paintover to help out later. I've noticed in certain instances in your pieces where you do push saturation, they tend to look better (to me anyways). Try doing alot of paintings from life maybe? That's gotta be one thing I never see from you, are paintings from direct observation!

Hope you keep this updated =)

[Roczniak]

I realy enjoy your work, the drawings are perfect !

[HunterKiller_]

So good to see so much of your work in one place, Sir.
Inspiring works and designs.

I would appreciate it very much if you would please entertain a question of mine.
When you're conceptualizing creatures, how do you begin the first steps of visualizing a design? Do you arrange abstract shapes and build off them? Throw creature parts together? Or perhaps see the entire image in your mind?

Thank you very much, and please keep updating!

[UCT]

Mikes Sketchbook.

Subscribed!

[Hive_minD]

Great inspiration and artistic style to be found here. Thank you

Chris

[BohemianChaos]

yay Mike!! I always wondered why I couldn't find a sb of yours considering how much work you pump out. Good to see you posting. I can't wait to see more.

Catch ya on the flip side.

Janae

[Nadiamoon]

Beautiful sketches. I give 5 stars

[shamandalie]

Wow, your character creations are awesomely awesome! Can i marry your brain? LOL.

[Veneq]

Your work is the type of work any artist can look to for inspiration. There is so much to learn from your style and technique. Great work!

[forgeman]

Your work is awesome! It is by far one of the best I've seen. I'm just starting out dp... Your work is very inspiring. Very readable and clean line work which translates to your painted work. One of the books that helped me greatly on drawing human anatomy is Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life. I can't wait to see more of your stuff! I know it inspires me to keep on creating.

[Mike Corriero]

forgeman@- Thanks I appreciate the compliments.

Crazy Pills@- Thank you

shamandalie@- Thanks

Nadiamoon@- Thanks, I appreciate that.

BohemianChaos@- Hey thanks, good to see you stop by.. been a while, hope things are well.

Hive_minD@- Thanks man

UCT@- Hey UCT, hopefully I'll keep this updated enough to be worthy of having you subscribe. Most of my sketchbook threads tend to die off ^^

HunterKiller_@- This new update was kept with your question in mind. Though it's a humanoid and not necessarily the naturalistic animal mixing designs I usually create it shows how I begin a sketch..even at the very rough beginning steps. Before I really know what it will be aside from knowing that it will stand up right and be a small humanoid of some sort. I'll make another page or two up that goes more in depth about the mixing and matching of animal anatomy to create a creature next time.

Roczniak@- Thanks

Justin Oaksford@- Thanks for the crit, I often think at times...because people tell me this, that my work is actually perhaps a bit too saturated. Though I do agree with you about David's quote. That It's necessary to push beyond what you would "normally" do and see what happens and if it works it works, if it doesn't at least you tried something different. I think my latest images have been kept more with the white/yellow lighting. One of the things I do a lot is paint on a pure white background and I tend to focus more on the silhouette of the design and I make it hard on myself to really push the lighting. I'm working on it.... I kept your crit in mind for this work in progress I'm about to post.

Quinn Simoes@- Hey, thanks. Yea I can see that.. especially in the fire giant pose. I'll have to fix the positioning and perspective of his legs if I bring him to a finish. Thanks for the fresh eye.

Maestro Andres@- Thanks, I appreciate the compliment.

Bojee@- Hey Bojee thanks man.

The Curehead@- Yea, I think the axolotl is one of my favorites too, I think it's just the look of the animal itself and its skin texture design. I'd love to have one as a pet but I'm sure they're hard to care for. I believe in Planet Earth they have a relative of one in the caves section that is completely eyeless... pretty cool stuff.

This is a page of sketching to kind of show some of the thought process that goes into my rough sketches. It's odd for me to show this because it's done so quickly and without any pre-planning more often than not. It's strange to show steps for (sketching). At any rate, I hope this is of some help to those that asked.

This then just shows a quick color base thrown down below the sketch which is on a multiply layer. I allow the sketch to show through for most of this stage until I start to get more comfortable with the shapes and lighting. I'm using minimal colors right now just to establish the form with two light sources. One dominant light source and the other a secondary bounce lighting to bring out the shapes in the shadow areas.

Here you can see the image is updated though it's still considered a Work in Progress and isn't finished just yet. I've tried to keep things simple for most of this, trying to work more on defining the form and shapes. This is essentially a mark-up of me critiquing my own work. You can see all the little thoughts going on in my head about various issues and areas that need to be refined. Checking the image at a thumbnail size and flipped also helps a lot.


Mike C -

[Mike Corriero]

I wanted to post a few of these here as well since I'll be posting Final Designs of some of this stuff when I get the time. As well as when I get permission for a few. I know they were posted once before but I just wanted a place to keep these together. I plan on continuing with this pen style whenever time allows.

[Jonas Heirwegh]

Thanks for sharing Mike! Very cool stuff!

Do you happen to have some good ref links for animals?

[Veneq]

That sketch process tutorial is pretty cool. I love seeing processes - especially from artists of your caliber. That reflective light on the goblin is pretty intense, but it also illustrates what you are talking about - and I suck at secondary light sources anyway.

Thanks for posting that!

[RandAlThor]

Excellent progress shots mike, it really helps to understand your process more than just looking at pretty pictures. Keep up the good work ;-)

[Mitchell]

Really great designs Mike, they feel very organic yet mechanical at the same time. Beautiful rendering in pen as well. A small note on some of your rendered peices, sometimes the lighting and transitions in value tend to be too harsh of edges flattening it quite a bit. I think softening those edges up will help quite a bit and make the form read better. Agreed with Justin, that some life work would really be helpful. Keep up the good work Mike.

[Mark Bot]

man those pen sketches are wicked. super tight lines, great job.
also, thanks for the process post you made earlier. really great to see how you put together a creature.

[Helioth]

Hey Mike Corrierierio, good stuff : D
the proknos porkru figure seems a delectable erudite chap...
similar to the creature you came up with on the multiplayer sketch page thing.
can sense the movement in the latter sketches also.

was great advice you had to give, on vent, I've been trying to get some things together to make a sketchbook but it all still sucks too much. ; )

[Intervain]

love the descriptions of the process - so helpful! Awesome sketchbook!

[Harmageddon]

Your drawings are very cool; I like the style and execution very much.
Also, thanks for explaing the process you go through when drawing. A lot of recognizable steps, and some very good ideas that I'm going to experiment with . This book rocks!

[Juhani Jokinen]

Some really cool stuff here. Really digging those recent creature sketches.


Keep on rockin' dude

-Juhani

[yanino]

very interesting!

[OldJake666]

Wow Mike! Majorly hickup worthy stuff in here.
The sketch tutorial really helped me. Thanks.

[jerry]

Those creatures in pen are just awesome. It's so fresh i can hardly comprehend what they're all about

Jerry

[davi]

really enjoy the design labeled 96, i like the different little textures on it

[Grizzliman]

Awesome concepts and creatures,

Perfect, like always

Grizz

[towy]

wow very cool concepts, funny creatures,
good job

[S.C. Watson]

Oy, Mike. Some really great stuff in here as always.

All the best,
~Shane

[Coinpurse]

awesome work as usual mike,
Man I could have sworn you had an exclusive SB?