Sea Dragon 1

Sketches

Things were a little different when I started out with a water-based dragon, in that I had more of a solid idea as to his story. The idea was that the reason this dragon lived its life submerged was that it was considered deformed compared to the standards of his kind.

  

  

 

With the narrative already in mind starting out, the water dragon was more of a case of what sort of fish or ocean dwelling animal I should emulate. Whales, seahorses and eels seemed the most viable options, since they already looked reletivly dragonish and gave the best impression of a deformed dragon.

As an expansion of the whole peaceful dragon idea, when it came to the subsequent seahorse drakes and beyond, the mandate had become that the dragon would have a sort of hypnotic beauty about him that would lull his opponents rather than engaging them head on.

Malbraxes 2

Layers

   

Malbraxes 

Thumbnails





Layers

  

From the point when the backstory was established, it became a great deal easier drawing thumbnails. While I did go through separate separate expressions such as complacent, angry, menacing etc. mostly I was more interested in the design of the tree itself. More notably its shape and posture. Ultimately I settled on a design that looked as though the dragonlike element was growing out of the tree to emphasize the idea of these being to separate beings.

Swamp/Forest Dragon 2

Sketches

  

  

After experimenting with twigs and leaves instead of horns, I changed the idea to that of a dragon who doesn’t just live amongst trees but has a sort of symbiotic connection with them, basically a dragon that looks half-tree/half-drake.

With the tree dragon hybrid idea I went from dragon that has tree like elements, to dragon that is semi-consumed by a tree, which was fine and worked well enough and that was going to be the end of development. However then I had the idea that instead of this being a dragon with tree like elements, it would be more interesting if it was the other way round, i.e. a tree that took on the appearance of a dragon.

This aspect helped flesh out the his backstory and from that point I definitively knew who this character was and what the tree theme had to do with him. Specifically he was a dragon who gave his life protecting a great tree; sadly the tree was uprooted and died anyway. After the dragons sacrifice however the husk of the tree was reanimated, and started to take on the appearance of a drake.

Swamp/Forest Dragon 1

Sketches

 

The first theme I’ve chosen to go with in designing a dragon revolves around jungle/swamps. A drake that would make its home in or around wood and trees. I had a few ideas surround the narrative aspects for the character, such as how he hates dragon-fire, thus his choice to live amongst forests.

I looked at animals like crocodiles, warthogs etc. to start with and began drawing from there. Aspects like the wide grey eyes and scaly hands I quite licked, so for a while they became the focus going forward.

Skeletal Anatomy

These drawings were for my understand of dragon anatomy. I started postures then moved on to skeletal structure later on. Really these images were just a matter of practice in which I familiarised myself with how to start drawing dragons and provide myself with a baseline to start with.

  

Research

 

Skeletons

  

  

Project: Shadow of the Colossusish Game. (Except if you rode a dragon instead of a horse)

The goal is to design the creatures of a Hypothetical game centered around Dragons, As such I will spend this project primarily drawing dragons based on themes like Dessert, Windy, Mountain, Sea etc. The first thing I did was draw a map and chose what sort of dragons I should draw based on where they were geographically.

Images