C.O.W. - topic ideas - post 'em!

[xia]

Here we go:

"The Death"
"Hell's King/Queen"
"Twisted Sphinx"
"Hell Hound"
"Chimera 2005"
"Furious Monkey King"
"Eastern Anubis"
"Lavethan"
"Poseidon"

[dejong]

Golem - animated being crafted from inanimate material (Flesh, Stone, Clay, Metal, Straw, Rubber, anything)

Gas Powered Animal

[possessed]

~ inverted flesh
~ prehistoric animals from another world
~ bed bugs
~ microscopic monstrocities
~ animals fused with weapon/armory
~ high gravity world

[DernierCri]

I'll go with more peaceful ones:

~ schizophrenic balerina
~ extraterrestrial grandma
~ paranoid concept artist

I wonder how you pick those out?..

[Fozzybar]

not one of yours that's for sure...

[Chia]

Yay for going with the dream eater idea! XD
And so, I have a few more ideas...

* Bugs of mass destruction
* The ultimate predator
* Stealthy creatures
* Bigfoot/Yeti/Sasquatch
* Flashy beings
* Camouflage beasts

[pvrhye]

Quilt Creature.
Housepet for a Merperson
Living Trap
Low gravity dweller

[Zaknafain]

goblin mount
pet of the future
the redesign of an existing animal (like a turkey )

[Carnifex]

-it was too stupid to survive.
-something's not right here
-watch your head/hands/feet/groin/other body part.
-wow,it's so big!
-it eats shoes!
- don't touch that cute but deadly siren maskot who feeds on lava and has a problem with venomous birds and digging anal parasites!

[Shamagim]

what about : "armored"
( perhaps a good one to test other textures besides flesh...)

[arteric]

"don't touch that cute but deadly siren maskot who feeds on lava and has a problem with venomous birds and digging anal parasites!"

BRILLIANT idea! Original and kick ass. Can we do this one Fozzy, Can we??

You had me rolling on the floor with this one Carnifex! Thanks for the good laugh.

Eric

[Fozzybar]

for me it's fine, what are the other members thinking?

[Matt Dixon]

...that it's a funny, but presumably not serious, topic suggestion that would be a very strange choice when there are several pages of suitable creature ideas to draw from. I think we want to be careful that creature of the week, doesn't turn into turn these words into the caption for a single frame cartoon of the week, as occasionally happens with the DSG. I don't see how the topic in question would give any scope for serious design.

[Uziel]

Well we could do something for future movies like the hobbit (Smaugh)or after the blade trilogy they perhaps make the story of Abigail and Hannibal king and they need a vampire-creature to fight, a new Alien mutation for AVP2, Underworld 2 -> a new werewolf-vampire breed...

[OxCreative]

Hi, dunno if anyone has said anyhting like this yet but what about a

Creature after/during attack (defence mechanisms/ability to heal etc)
OR
All seeing Creature (some type of prey creature that needs good vision to see predators)

[fungi]

don't touch that cute but deadly siren maskot who feeds on lava and has a problem with venomous birds and digging anal parasites!

NO.... NO NO... NO


no

[S.C. Watson]

Um, yeah. NO on the mermaid anal parasite venemouse bird rehash thing.

I *would* like to see C.O.W. take a slightly different/more professional turn, though, if I may be so bold here.

Uziel had a great idea of working on creature ideas for upcoming movies, which is where really something like this would be seen the most (not counting games).

But what I'd really like to see is more of a description in the title of the pic instead of leaving that up to the artists - my reasoning is thus: when I'm commissioned by someone to do a picture, say Fantasy Flight Games, they give me the description and I have to match that. Not the other way around.

Sometimes it does happen that I get a vague illo description from someone, but that's not too often.

For example,here's the illo description for one of the cards I did for FFG, Watkins Root Cellar:

Exterior shot of external cellar doors that have been swung open. There are stairs leading down into darkness. There are claw-like scratches on the insides of the doors, hoof-prints in the mud outside the cellar, and muddy (bloody?) hoofprints on the stairs. We can't see the creature that made these marks, but we see glowing red eyes glowering at us from inside the darkness.

I interpeted it this way, but it could have been handled a thousand different ways. Now, FFG is fairly lax with their descriptions and how the artist interpet them. I've some clients that provide me *pages* of write up, describing not only the characters, but what they're wearing, where they'er standing, their expression, etc. So, it can go to an extreme I'm not proposing for this. I'd say we keep it about the FFG level. Let the person submitting the idea spend some time creating the creature and perhaps setting and mood instead of just shooting out a bunch of unrealted words, and let the artist do their visual thang.

I think the C.O.W. would be *much* more powerful, *much* more challenging if the artists had to be more specific in what they were creating. What I'm seeing right now is everyone playing to their strengths, which is good and fun, but not really challenging, because you *know* you can do whatever it is you're good at. But if we pushed ourselves to match a description that has been previously set before the illustration has begun, I think we'd all be better and stronger artists for it.

Cheers,
~Shane

[Shamagim]

What about:

"Armored giant"( creature of cource)

"Storm creature" ( living in a storm, or feeding from it, or using it...)


oregano: i think the idea is to leave a very vague description for the creature....you can make something better if people specify of cource, but i think ( just think) that the idea is to struggle in your head about what could match the short title they just gave you.......this is much much different from taking the specs from a real CA job...cause they give you something solid enought to work with...But making something from a short idea makes the concept more "yours", Also by making just a title you get much more interpretations, and therefore a wide variety of concepts.

So in the end i disagree with you, but i consider it a good idea and i think IOM has something more like you just descrived.

Again, just saying this to let you know i didnt ignore what you just posted in here ( and is btw just my opinion...)

Edited again. ( because i wasnt being very clear)

[Matt Dixon]

Fair point, Shane. Though you're talking about illustration there, not concept. I wonder how valid the COW would be if you remove the conceptual element?

In defense of the existing topics, I think they're intended to encourage as many participants as possible and a variety of finished images so we get to enjoy some eye candy along with our conceptual workout. A more specific brief would have the potential to turn off casual COW'ers and would obviously produce a crop of very similar submissions.

Having said that, it'd be good to mix up the topics from time to time to keep things fresh. There are plenty of worthwhile suggestions on these pages to pull from, but I think it's important that design plays a part each week.

[Shamagim]

Ahh, yea i forgot to mention that i dont think mixing the ideas that much is a good one, i still think of it as a joke....( maybe the mix could be an idea for the COW 20, as a special thing..)

For now i think C.O.W still needs to get much more solid before that.. but if you end up mixing the previous anyways, i think no more than 3...otherwise is just to much.

[Fozzybar]

ok, i think there is an easy way to find out, what really is a good thing to keep on or what is just not working...let's keep the main line with topics as we had them before, but from time to time i will intersperse a topic which is more like a description (as oregano said with the ffg-cards) or one with only a name of the creature only(as Matt once suggested) or any other kind of topics, which differ from the main line...

We will see quickly which round gave a great turn-out and was fun or which one were boring...

[Uziel]

I can't disagree. But it would be great if you can look at COW more in a professional way and not losing the freedom. I guess some people don't brainstorm enough about the topics "what can I put in this creature to make it original,atractive and still specific"
I wouldn't mind what Oregano said but I think the discription has to be very good and original. Perhaps someday Fozzy finds the right stuff.


Edit: we had the same idea at the same time Fozzy.

[Carnifex]

THAT LAST ONE WAS A JOKE ENTRY! A JOKE,OK?
wow,i didn't think anyone would take that serious.
sorry if i upset you unneccessarily.
you did notice the smily in that post,did you?

[vaughany_boy]

Light bringer.
Camouflage trap.
Drone (as in part of an animal communial in nature eg. Termites, ants)
Fluid Space entity
Barbed mount (something that is ridden)
Great Strangler
Sentient Vegetation

?

[S.C. Watson]

THAT LAST ONE WAS A JOKE ENTRY! A JOKE,OK?
wow,i didn't think anyone would take that serious.
sorry if i upset you unneccessarily.
you did notice the smily in that post,did you?

Hey Carnifex,

I think we all understood that it was toungue in cheek but at the same time it also provided a way to approach COW from a different perspective. I don't think anyone *really* thought you were serious. Okay, maybe one or two

That said, thanks for thoughts on my idea Matt, Fozzy, Shamagim and Uziel. I like Fozzy's idea of taking the middle ground on that to see what might work and what won't.

Cheers all,
~Shane

[Xpose]

Ground pounder
Fire Fly

[OxCreative]

What about:

An underground dwelling creature
A cave creature
A creature of the desert
A microscopic creature/parasite
A decomposing creature
A create during/after an attack (defence mechanisms/self-healing)
????
what d'ya think people

[Matt Dixon]

How about something along these lines?

Sci-fi movie. Secondary alien character for a spaceport bar scene. This guy needs to look like a seasoned traveller, maybe a smuggler, bounty hunter or something of that sort. In shot 14-12, he needs to raise a glass, so some kind of appendage / hand will be required in the design.

First person shooter. 'Grunt' creature for rainforest environment. We want these creatures to die after one or two hits and attack in packs, so we don't need anything that looks too tough, but they do need to move quickly and should have some sort of camo suitable for their surroundings. No bigger than the main human character please, fellas!

Strategy game. I need a supply creature for the evil faction. This fellow needs to be pretty huge, slow-moving and have some way to carry trees, masonry and other supplies about. We're in a classic fantasy setting, but I don't want to see any trolls or giant orcs! Remember the evil faction's identifying colours are red and black - I need both to be obvious in your design.

Promotional CG movie. Flying beasts to populate a magical city in the clouds. The environment concepts show buildings in an ancient Greek style - lots of pillars, steps and statues - rising from large cloud formations. Sunset colours. In our last meeting the director said, ' Anything goes, but no angels. '

TV series. We need a demon for epidsode 6 of the next season. This is the only CG in this epidsode and it's only on screen for a few minutes, so we can blow the budget on this thing. It has dialogue, so it needs a mouth that's capable of speech. It also casts a spell, so we'd like arms of some kind too. Keep in mind that marketing like to push these characters as action figures, so no horns, spikes or other pointy stuff that'll cause problems getting them approved as toys!

I've tried to combine Uziel and Oregano's suggestions; mock briefs that could be part of your Monday morning emails from a lead artist / art director / production manager etc. They're all pretty open, but with a few simple challenges to overcome. What do you think?

[Fozzybar]

hmmm...i am afraid that some topics tilt to the "character" section...i want to keep the creatures of C.O.W. as species which can be found in an animal encyclopedia, a whole genus of a certain creature...

[0kelvin]

While Fozzy's right about those topics being a little too character, not enough creature, I think the format would be really interesting to try out.


0kelvin