Paint creature designs

Creature designer Bobby Chiu explains how he develops a pen drawing into a fully painted fantasy creature that has its roots in reality

Illustrator Bobby Chiu’s colourful fantasy creature has its roots in reality.

The word ‘fictional’ brings to mind something imaginative that doesn’t exist in real life. In contrast, ‘non-fiction’ suggests something that’s based in reality, whether it’s factual, historical and so on. However, to paint a realistic yet fictional character, I need elements from both camps. I must think about how to make something feel factual when it’s clearly not.

As a student, my favourite challenge was creating realistic but fictional feathered or furry creatures. My fascination with these types of creatures continued over my 15-plus years of designing creatures for films, television and games. This is a subject that I love, so it’s what I’ve chosen to cover in this workshop.

As with storytelling, believability depends on the details. If all the details add up and are consistent throughout, then that makes the story more believable. The same applies to painting fictional objects: believability is in the details, especially the subtle ones. If you get the details right then your efforts will be recognised by the viewer.

In this workshop, I’ll start off with inspiration and coming up with the initial idea. Next, I’ll do a step-bystep of my painting process, inspiration, structure and texture, with some helpful tips in between about painting in general.