Dude were you the one who made that tutorial on mythical beasts that was like... mixing vs taping? I dont remember the exact wording but it was like, mixing two creatures and making something that feels natural vs just gluing two creatures togheter and calling it a day.
Ive been looking for it since forever but I cannot find it 😭
That's me! The technique I coined is Splice vs Blend.
Blend mixes traits and colors into a chunky smoothie and assembles a believable creature. Splice is what you call taping. Where you grab whole body parts of animals and stick them together with clear seams or just bare gradients. A griffin with bird claws for front legs and lion paws for back is an example of splicing.
Check out my creature design masterpost, or just the splice vs blend tag
Hello! do you have any tips on how you do your character/creature designs? I love all your designs so much their all so cool especially your
After that, feel free to browse all my tutorials in the art tips tag!
How to Draw and Design Gryphons and Hippogryphs by using photo references of eagles, lions and horses?
Draw everything individually, from multiple angles.
How to draw horses || How I practice anatomy || Gesture drawing
It's like juicing up for a very tasty dream by consuming your favorite genre, characters, settings, etc and hoping your subconscious combines them.
If the final result is your target, and you see your drawing arm as a gun taking aim, then references are your bullets. Fill the chamber with reference unless you want to play roulette.
Your first step in reference gathering is to be specific. Know what you want and stick with it. I searched specifically for African Lion and Gold Eagle. Being specific helps you observe detail more accurately, and it already puts you one step ahead of generic designs.
I'm only going to tackle Lion + Eagle today for simplicity, but you can use this advice to combine two, three, or dozens of animals including horses.
Get your reference, and start practicing. Keep it simple and undetailed, only drawing the essence of the photo, rather than exact position and proportion.
Use action poses to practice! Even though they're more challenging, they will infuse your final result with action as well. Look up things like hunting, fighting, walking, running, landing, etc to get action reference.
Practice most on the creature you're having the hardest time with. That was Lions, for me. I even did a separate page where I studied the structure of their manes, since I wanted that in my griffin design.
Remember: you can trace photos as part of study! This is helpful for correcting proportions and anatomy. Make sure you are tracing mass and bones, not outlines.
Now that you're weapon is loaded with reference, you'll be able to design freehand without copying a photo. This is IDEAL because you won't be slowed down by anatomy. Now what we're here for: Design.
Creature Design Masterpost || Splice Vs Blend
This is going to be yet another visit to Splice vs. Blend technique, so strap in. Here's some guys I drew after I finished studying. No photos needed at this stage because I've eaten them all.
The most common creature design technique is something I call Splicing. You take pieces of animals and graft them onto each other with stitches. Griffins are notorious for this with their bird talons on the front legs and lion paws on the back. That's a creature that was formed through magic, not evolution. This automatically makes your griffin less believable. And probably a bit awkward in the walking department.
So here's a new challenge: Blending. Take bits of each creature and put them in a mixer, letting the ingredients land all over the place and amongst each other. What if we had a lion skull, with an extra-thick bird beak in place of the jaws? What if the lion chin was still there in the form of a tuft of fur? Maybe the tear duct from the lion, and the eyelids of bird? Let's give it lion ears with the furrowed brow so typical of raptors.
It already looks like a new life form, rather than a photoshopped amateur hour of recognizable animals. I could cover it in either feathers or fur and it would still be distinct as a new species. I want the classic lion mane in some form, so I'm taking the shape and turning it into long, fluffy feathers.
Don't stop there! Try identifying what traits make an eagle and eagle, or a lion a lion, and sticking them between each other.
Keep combining! Challenge convention! Add and omit parts and pieces to your heart's content.
Take this practice to all parts of all creatures. Throw new stuff in a blender instead of stitching it together. This especially includes color! You see a lot of spliced markings in novelty griffins, with a specific cat and bird. Artists get stuck on copy-pasting animal patterns because they're afraid the ingredients won't be recognizable, or they're just lost in the sauce of loving tigers they forget to actually have fun with it.
It's still recognizable as tiger and peacock, but much more compelling, wouldn't you say? Go for something unique rather than staying with what feels "safe." There's a million griffin artists out there, but only one You.
I just wanted to tell you that you legit opened my eyes to a whole new level of creature design. I was annoyed that many of my cross-breeding attempts looked like Splicing, but I didn't know how to *define* what was wrong. Now it'll be a little easier to spot and improve on, I cannot express how much your tips and art have renewed my love of creature design. And for that I am sincerely SO grateful. <3
you're welcome! I'm glad I could put into words what bothered me so much growing up HOWEVER
Splicing doesn't make things wrong, but it makes them unnatural. Sometimes unnatural is the way to go!
To refresh splice vs blend: A manticore using Asiatic lion, Indian scorpion, and "ancient Persian bust" statue reference. I like to reference animals and people of the time and place where myth originates
Splicing (top) looks like a creature formed by a bored god; meant to be uncanny and threatening in its familiarity. But the blended version (bottom) looks more like a predator that evolved in the jungles of India that can and will swallow you whole.
Both blending and splicing are valid, but I like blending best in most circumstances. Let's try another one.
I think we can all agree this creature looks super cool. But what is it? There's probably some lion (big surprise, people love making lion beasts) and a goat (kri-kri), and from the mouth/tail/scales probably a snake (Anatolian meadow viper) It's neat but it doesn't match the ancient descriptions enough to identify the myth.
Little easier to tell now huh? I kept the markings spliced as well for even more distinction, but colors and markings matter less to a chimera than easily identifiable anatomy. The chimera is the Original splice, so even though a blend looks more "realistic" it doesn't work. Plus, by chasing "anatomically feasible" I've eliminated the "serpent for a tail" because it doesn't make sense evolutionary. But by doing that, I lost a HUGE part of what makes a chimera and chimera.
Compare the blend map with the different arrangements of splice maps. You can get really creative with your seams and stitches, so treat splicing as a technique and not a sin. True mastery of a technique is knowing when and when not to use it.
Blending almost always makes things look more natural, but sometimes...
Genuine question, do you have any tips for blending traits for someone with a more cartoonish-style? Like I want to make more biologically realistic creatures, but I also enjoy my cartoony style too much to really desire trying realism routinely.
Good question! My creature design stuff tends to be on the realistic side but I am capable of untold style variation. The thing about style is that it gets better when you know what you're doing. That's because splice/vs blend is about fundamentals
Creature Design Masterpost || Splice Vs Blend || Splice/Blend griffin tutorial || When to splice and NOT blend
Anatomy, movement, weight, balance, and biology are super important to learn on a realism level, because you can then translate that into styles and people will look at your art and say "I don't know why but it compels me..." So hopefully you think that when you see my example today.
Without further ado, let's meet our stylized victims!
We're doing a griffin yet again because griffins are where you see the most splicing, in all levels of realism. I picked a Siamese cat and flamingo because this mix is going to be a Long Boy.
This is a pretty classic griffin format but look at him! He looks like the result of a mad scientist with a "combinonator" ray. That's good for stories where things are made with magic, but less great for "griffins are their own species" or a the child of a flamingo and a Siamese character who got hitched.
A true mixed breed will blend traits all over the body. A super easy way to design the hide is to take one animal's markings and use the other one's color. Blend, bend, and stretch physical features to get something that is both between the critters and more than the sum of their parts.
Doesn't that look more natural? It's still very stylized (Those legs are two dimensional, come on) but still more believable in a fantasy jungle or palace steps than the splice mess.
Additionally; here's a breakdown of my descision making for the anatomy:
There's a lot of thought that goes into every line, even though the cartoony goofiness makes it look easy. Practice your fundamentals enough and these decisions will come second nature to you and bring structure to every creation you make.
Hello! do you have any tips on how you do your character/creature designs? I love all your designs so much their all so cool especially your jackalope/rabbit oc! Love them^^ I would love to hear how you come up with the designs! (I’m planning to make a game and big spooky animal creatures are a big aspect n I wanna do it as best as I can so uh yeah like I said you got any tips?👀✨)
Creature design masterpost
I have been making a BUNCH of tutorials and tips about this and many other topics so check them out!
Yeah! My biggest tip is understanding Splice vs Blend techniques, <- I go into a LOT of detail on getting a cohesive creature here.
It's pretty clear visually here, but splicing is cutting and pasting animal parts together with no or minimum blending at the edges. Classic and real life genetic chimeras are splices of two organisms, and their boundary is very clear. It looks really unnatural. Hybrid animals and mixed breeds shuffle traits all over, so learn from nature to make things natural.
and then consider what traits you add and ask "how did this manage to evolve?" why do they have glowing eyes? Is it for communication? intimidation? warning of poison content?
What adaptions did they develop to best take advantage of their niche/biome? What was the process like? What did the intermediate stages look like and how did they function?
Make something cohesive, give thought to "how is it going to hold up its own weight?" how does it fight? Even rabbits have tools for fighting, and they're built for running and fleeing above all else.
How does it communicate? How would its body adapt to that?
These are all important aspects of Worldbuilding
Don't forget that animals will have instincts and behaviors, while sentient creatures will have Culture. A HUGE thing I see is people giving sentient creatures normal paws but somehow using and building tools? You gotta adapt that sort of stuff dude. They dont needs hands if you can come up with an alternate method of fine motor skills (prehensile trunk, tail, tentacles, weird teeth, an extra set of limbs just for manipulating things, etc) if your creature physically cannot hold and build a knife, they have no business wielding it.
If you cant draw them crafting something, don't draw them using it unless they got it from someone else.
But don't get too carried away with fancy digits you forget the primary purpose of limbs: locomotion and weight bearing.
Here is an unfortunate dragon where I picked my favorite traits and put them together. I also added vestigial arms for some reason and now I have to explain why they're like that. The same goes for any other Just Cause trait you wanna slap on. His name is Dinkus
he's got some problems and you can kinda feel it just looking at him, but it will help you way more to name them. Every part of your creature should influence every other part. A horse has a strong neck and strong haunches because its a domino effect. Let's make this guy hefty
Though a biped would be Possible, it would just look like a t-rex, so I brought the wings down and reverted them to load-bearing legs. But because they used to be wings with long fingers, I'm having her walk on her knuckles because shortening the bat fingers takes a Long time and if evolution finds a shortcut, it will exploit it. But that's a flightless creature so is it really a dragon?
There's dinkus turned in the other direction. I wanted them to fly and so all their adaptions are for that. I also wanted that funky head and made up a reason for it to be that way. You might automatically have this small dragon hunting lizards and rats and such, but if you consider their physiology for a moment, their diet, you just expanded your world and filled out the vulture niche without even trying.
BE CAREFUL THOUGH!
While you cant worldbuild too much, you can infodump too much. So once you have everything built, you need to ask yourself what is appropriate for your project. If it's a dramatic story, you do not need to pause the battle to describe how the buzzard-dragons that are waiting to feast evolved. Just show them off, in writing or visually, and let the audience infer how they evolved and what their behavior is like form their anatomy.
Some people (me) want to engage in the worldbuilding details and get into the nitty gritty of biology/textiles/trade/politics/culture/etc but most audiences are here to be entertained. If you have dragons instead of vultures, a few people will go THAT'S SO COOL but most of them won't even notice... consciously.
Worldbuilding makes a world more believable and immersive. By having dragons eat the dead of war, you remind the reader that this is Not earth, but rather a place that is so whole and complete you know who is going to clean up the roadkilled jackalope stinking up the cobblestone.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuutt....
If you want to create a national geographic journal (which is what I'm doing) and your audience wants it too? (or if you dont care what your audience wants you do this for YOU) Go for it! roll around in details. daydream and doodle new ones. Go crazy go stupid go have fun
OH YEAH! And the biggest tip of all is study nature!
Try to guess what developed and why. How stuff is used, and then you can turn around and put both form and function into your own creatures.
Almost forgot: I clean, document, photograph, and assemble animal skeletons/skulls as a hobby. soooooo that helps me study Real Good.
Play games, make up challenges, and then make it harder
Studying what exists is the best way to create what doesn't. Study work you like, study my work and see what choices I made and ask yourself "why did he use THAT trait?"
Speaking of my work
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scuze me i wanna learn to sketch creatures like you do, how would I go about learning that?
Draw from life! Here’s my tips on drawing horses
For other creatures.. well... The one thing that isn’t a tip is just that I grew up obsessed with drawing animals. I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil, but only started drawing humans five years ago when I was 20 (which is a WHOLE other story)
The thing that helped the most was studying bones, so if you have access to skulls/skeletons or replicas, get some. Pictures are cool but nothing beats holding the real thing. You can also study 3d models in the calacademy skull gallery
Ok I deleted a page and a half of rambling to get to the Big Tip. There’s something that bothers me a lot in creature design, which I will call “splicing”
Splicing vs blending! Using this handy Minotaur who volunteered his time for us
This is spliced! It’s just an animal head on a human body. Sometimes I will splice things like this but only if it makes sense in the story. My manticores are spliced rather than blended because in my head they’re more of a cursed/magicked mash of creatures than something that developed on its own.
Manny here is going to get another piece spliced on
I chopped off his legs and put bull ones in their place. This adds a little more cohesion and I see it as more believable and less “magical accident.” I don’t like stopping here but I see a lot of horny furries that prefer this, so it definitely has its applications. This is still thoroughly spliced with just two cuts between the two lifeforms.
Here’s where things get less Spliced and more Blended. In a blender, everything gets mixed together and spit out in a smooth concoction. This blender gave him fur all over instead of just on the bull parts. I also changed up his hands and gave him hoof-fingers, but not just straight up bull-feet-for-hands. This is pretty good but still solidly a furry.
This is much closer to blend than splice, now. This is definitely not cow limbs grafted onto a human. The Minotaur was not a human with a bull glued to him, but he was conceived, carried, and born as a half human, half bovine child. His mother was a human and his sire was a bull and his origin was greek mythology so things tend to get Messed Up. Hybridizing animal species/breeds is generally not “Copy of one parent with the body part the other” with the exception of corgi crosses.
Shoulders are one of the last things I see people changing on the splice to blend scale, but it really adds SO much monsterness to your designs. Plus, with lower more animal shoulders, Manny can drop on all fours and sprint more comfortably than Hu-Manny.
While the minotaur is literally described as “head and tail of a bull on the body of a man” I don’t see why that has to be the end of it. Describing a creature with all the detail and care of a field guide is not terribly important when it’s trying to kill you. Bull-man is enough for a warning. Blended, this guy looks a lot more monstery and I can see it charging headfirst to impale me, which is what really counts here.
Now there’s a monster boy! I actually drew this one second after drawing splice stage 1, and can you tell which one was faster, easier, and more fun?
My process is not to slowly add creature parts like above, but to blend them up in my head and put them on the page already blended. But I have a lot of practice so that comes more easily to me!
This doesn’t only work on human + animal, but on any number of combinations with any number of ingredients. Let’s take the fabled Questing Beast, an Arthurian legend from the middle ages described as having
“the head and neck of a snake, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and the feet of a hart [deer]”
Here’s a spliced version where I cut and glued animals together
This is definitely fun but it doesn’t look like an actual animal, its very obviously a mashed creature. Trying to run with hooves AND paws? Is it predator or prey? Whats with all the clashing patterns?
So let’s turn this splice into a blend. Giving it deer hooves on all four feet because we need some dangerous hoofed animals. The head and neck is gonna be a hybrid of snake and deer with added spots. In fact let’s hybrid the spots themselves to look more like the snake pattern, but spotted and furred all over. The lion haunches are cool but we’ll just take their powerful muscles and keep the lion tail, but put some spots on it. Finally, we’ll make the legs really long so the snake neck doesn’t look out of proportion. Might as well add some little yearling antler nubs from the deer and give it a tiny mane from a juvenile lion.
Now we have a blended Questing Beast
Doesn’t that look nicer and more cohesive? You could even believe it’s a real animal if it wasn’t so absurd.
Spliced creature design is valid and has its place, but to me it always adds an element of uncanny unnaturalness, which is great as a story element!
So have fun! Splice, blend, and invent your own techniques! Try a lot of variety and you’ll eventually find a style that speaks to you.
