Fundamentals of Creature Design: How to Create Successful Concepts Using Functionality, Anatomy, Color, Shape & Scale

I love this book!! It’s super interesting and high quality. I would 1000% recommend it to anyone interested in character/creature design. Cannot recommend it enough!

I love how it goes into detail about creature making and thinking how to come up with them. The examples are also so well illustrated and beautiful! Seriously, if you need help with creatures/monsters this is the book!!

This book is so diverse! It discusses topics from the basic fundamentals of design, all the way into delving deep inside the anatomical properties of animals! I believe that artists who love examining, and observing species of animals will find this book helpful, it as well powers your creativity by showcasing different evolutionary attributes. The true power comes in when the book mixes imaginative design with real-world creatures. Every book is read because it gives the reader a different perspective, this book opened a whole new world for me in the realm of creature design, evolutionary and vestigial traits are everywhere! It even discusses the true process of collecting reference, and gaining greater knowledge! I am really glad to have picked this up, it has helped me tremendously since I had last designed a creature, thank you to the folks at 3dtotal. :)

This book is fantastic for intermediate or even beginning artists looking to take a crack at creature design. They provide multiple artist examples, animal anatomy guides, and some guided pieces that can be worked through to learn painting styles as wanted.

If I had to pick •one• book for creature design, this is the one I’d take on a dessert island. First, I agree with another reviewer that the font is too small. On the other hand, a smidge bigger would’ve probably doubled the page count because there’s a lot of text in the 285 pages. For what it’s worth, I’d buy it again if a large format version comes out.On to what I love. The advice is top notch. Sometimes obvious and other times coming from the voice of experience. It’s clear they know their subject.Visually, there’s also a lot to take in. The art is astonishing, inspiring, and does a great job demonstrating the principals described. They provide multiple examples and variations for reference which further illustrate the point.For one book on the subject, this is it. If you want to go deeper, check out Terryl Whitlatch’s books.

Disclaimer: This book is by no means a “beginner artist” book.Everything about this book is astonishing. The print quality, the content, the illustrations - everything. As other reviews have said, the font size is a little small; just make sure you read it in good lighting and hold it a little closer if need be, it’s worth it.I’ve included a photo of the table of contents, but even just seeing that list doesn’t do the actual content justice.By the time you’re done reading this book, you’ll have a fantastic understanding of every single step that should be taken to design fantasy creatures, and you might even learn something new about real life creatures! For instance, I learned that clown fish can apparently change from male to female as needed - how nifty!Buy the book, ignore the bad reviews!

Great book for comparative anatomy and flow of function. Tends to keep to known animal attributes for characters and does not delve too much into unknown fantastical attributes.

This book is even better than I thought it would be! I was expecting something medium sized, with some decent ideas of character design and perhaps a little bland writing on basic concepts but no! This is over 250 pages of in depth creature design, using anatomy from animals and creatures in real life, and how to adapt and combine concepts together. It also shows comprehensive details as why differing animals are so well adapted to their environments. This book is geared towards more serious or advanced artists as it does little to describe the process of drawing itself.