Your take on griffins is so cool 👀 Do you have worldbuilding notes somewhere? Like what their dynamic is with humans, or what their habitats and habits usually are? I’d love to know more about them!
Hey, thanks for asking! I actually had written a little species description for them, but I shelved it until I draw illustrations for it. However I might as well post it now with less relevant pictures. Who knows when would I get around to drawing those illustrations.
First of all... there are no gryphons on Tetra. No mortal ones, just spirits.
Spirits were created by the gods to be sentient blueprints for species. Flora & fauna were created out of chosen spirits (e.g. polar bear, barn owl), and the leftovers were repurposed (e.g. great horned gryphon, common pegasus).
In addition to the whole range of shapes/forms spirits were designed to take as part of nature, they also had their would-be behavioral patterns pre-set into them.
So now lets see how the Great Horned Gryphons would have lived!
Great horned gryphons (also simply referred to as 'griffins' from now on) are sexually dimorphic, and live in pairs. They are very resource-conscious - individuals not raised properly may hunt their food sources to extinction, after which they either starve to death or get themselves killed while ravaging the animals of other griffins or humans.
Each pair oversees a vast territory filled with wild herd animals. They engage in several behaviors that are basically animal husbandry. They will protect their herds from other predators and even natural disasters. They will herd their animals toward quality food. They can recognize juveniles of many species - humans included -, and will not eat them. They sometimes raise the abandoned offspring of other species, not because they plan to eat them, but because they get a kick out of it.
They don't hunt, per se. They hit up one of their herds, select a specimen, and carry it home for lunch. They like to construct their nests atop cliffs and similar high points overlooking their territory.
Their relationship with people is complex (and hypothetical, as is everything else), since people may want to claim the same lands for the same purposes. But typically if they saw a lone human child, just waltzing around on their territory, they'd pick it up and put it down near adult humans. Solitary adult people tend to be safe as well for different reasons. The staple of griffins is large animals, and they like to conserve their energy. Normally they won't get up for 1 lone human nugget.
If an adult pair spots an unrelated juvenile griffin on their turf, they leave it alone, but they don't tolerate mature trespassers or other pairs. They are hostile to all other species of gryphon. Given the opportunity, they will kill and eat them.
Great horned gryphons are viviparous and give birth to 1 chick at a time which stays with the parents for several years to learn some manners. Mostly moderation, recognizing important animal species, and caring for their animals.
Their lifespan is 40-70 years.
And that's more or less it. At present, great horned gryphons are not plural. There's just one spirit, Griffin, representing the whole species, either until the heat death of the universe or until he bites the dust.
Spirits are shapeshifters with a range of native forms as opposed to one original form. They have some rules among them on etiquette, such as when is it ok to take the form of another spirit. Griffin mostly uses his adult male form, and lets Phoenix take his adult female one.
Several of his species' characteristics can be felt in his personality - excels at relaxing, hard to anger or scare, won't hurt kids or pets and is good with them, extraverted, resource-conscious, enjoys having vast lands.
His relationship with humans is... complicated. Nowadays he kinda pretends to be a pet at the palace of the emperor of the Karkian Empire, and is banned from or unwelcome in several other countries. Sorcerers summon him sometimes, but the jolly fucker usually charges by the hour for his spirit-y services, and may even screw the summoners over if he doesn't like them.
Can I ask how you did the background in the Griffin animation? Is it a 3D environment moving about or is it hand animated as well?
It's drawn by hand, but I made a 3D mockup for reference! I mostly referenced the horizon line's motion. The other details were trial and error in 2D, and I used photo refs for them.
I referenced the shading and figure positions on this version. The griffin looks extra janky because it's my first time rigging something, and there was no retopo. I was running this thing with the 300k+ unoptimized model that I sculpted from scratch as well. It didn't need to be pretty, it just needed to be functional.
I referenced the horizon on this version. Renders with ultra colorful blocks like those have a name, I didn't even know that, I just thought it's helpful to make them that way! I found out several months into this project that they are called "clown pass"
I drew everything by hand though. I didn't outright trace because I like the janky line style. But to clarify, I think tracing my own work that I made with the sole purpose of making things easier for me would have been 100% fine.
I added the details in with a technique I initially tried to do the whole background with. A VERY long strip of graphic passing through the frame, fine-tuned per-frame with Transform/Rotate/Warp/Smudge. It didn't work out for the whole environment, but for smaller details like foliage it was fine. Since I also needed to move gradients, and I didn't want those to look janky, I used the Xes outside the frame to move them around smoothly. MG stands for Middle Ground.
Here's the final version of the frame! The numbers on the top left correspond to the frame from the 3D animation. That one has 309 frames, while the 2D animation has 200 unique frames.
What are the redlines from your warmup doodles? How do you do them and how do they achieve their purpose of correction?
Context, from my original post about it:
"I do the redlines after i finish each sketch to gauge my accuracy, and to see if i can find any specific areas i’m weak at.
They turned out neither better or worse than usual, but i was satisfied with them. I wanted to shake off my hyperfocus on line quality (it was obstructing my progress with other stuff), reset my observation skills (i was consistently getting specific things wrong from imagination), gain more sketching speed, and lose the performance anxiety."
I pull up a reference photo on my second screen and draw it on my primary.
I typically set a time limit. I may sometimes ignore the limit on the first attempt if I feel like I'm really struggling. Or - when solving performance anxiety is important - on any attempt that I unexpectedly like/enjoy. The 8 minute ones I probably wanted to make in 5 minutes. I mark how long each attempt took next to them.
When time is up, I put the reference photo under the sketch, and red blueline the parts where I think I deviated too much from the photo. Small errors are fine.
I check if there is a pattern/logic to the errors. If I get something consistently wrong, next time I'll know to pay special attention to it. Like if I consistently drew the legs or the torso too long or too short. I try to theorize on why I make the errors. The first most obvious theory may not be the correct one. There could be multiple reasons. I'll see if I got it right the next time I do the exercise.
Maybe it's that the refs are on a flat screen and aren't live models. Maybe I should close one eye every now and then. I don't put my pen up to the screen to measure anything, I just eyeball the lengths and angles. Maybe it's ok to use the pen sometimes to measure. Maybe my brain insists that legs are a certain length in comparison to another body part and I subconsciously "correct" the photo. Maybe I don't triangulate body part coordinates accurately enough and need more practice.
Either way, if I feel like I've done enough warming up, I get down to business. I don't wait until perfection, just until I feel ok to proceed. ✌️
Oh lol. Griffin's natural diet doesn't include humans (too small to be worth it), but he does eat people, *when offered,* and only in his own form.
Let's say, after a battle, you have a lot of dead bodies you don't know what to do with, but there's a t-rex sized polite carnivore right there that likes food. A match made in heaven, some would say.
When you drew Pegasus making a cat hiss + seagull scream + bullhorn sound, does that mean like a cat and a seagull screaming into a bullhorn, or like those two combined with that weird whine/doot feedback sound bullhorns can make? this is important for my auditory bastard immersion
Natural cat/seagull but much louder. :')
He's not a vocal/chatty animal, but his few vocalizations can be heard from a great distance in his natural environments (coasts, sea, ocean, cliffs). The cat-like hissing and yowling are for close-range, but he'll lean on that horn real hard if we are talking about getting jumpscared
Closest thing to a feedback sound might be if he screamed in an enclosed space that reverberates (just typical echo). Might give himself hearing damage with that though
honestly, i really love the weight you put into griffin's human form. i love how jovial and happy he looks, and honestly you don't see too much of his kind of body shape in art so i'm so happy to see more like him! i just love the amount of variation in your art honestly haha, even in the animals to the humans
I'm happy to hear that! I guess not, not much of his type. At first I didn't even know where to turn to for references! Getting enough material felt like a treasure hunt, haha. looking for unicorns..
I think his current look fits his personal history best. Initially I didn't like him as a person tbh.. Tweaking his human form actually helped start my obsessive period a bit. x)
I'm glad to know there's also a noticeable variety! I want to illustrate a wide variety in the implementation and usage of human forms among these shapeshifters, as well as the variety in relationship styles between them and their human companions. Variety in animals/creatures is a must. I think the biggest thing slowing me down in this endeavor is me getting obsessed with 1 character at a time whenever one of them clicks, lol
hello, I hope you're having a good day <33 I saw your recent post on my dash and I was STUNNED at the animated scene! It's insane to me I get to see your characters animated. Feeling blessed to be alive to see it, I am not exaggerating. You know, one of these times where you wake up and things are a little bumpy in your life but there's one thing that shines brightly you didn't know it could give you so much excitement? Yeah, that kind of thing ((:
I took my time for the past hour to reminisce over your blog again. It is one of the places I really love scrolling through and reading your writing. I had a question, if you don't mind me. The way you have improved is truly admirable. I know this might not be an easy ask to say "hey, how did you learn how to paint", so I'll ask this instead: I don't know how long you've been working full-time in art, but when do you make time for studies / drawing for fun? If it's not too much to respond to, how do *you* study? I remembered your posts with your redlines and wanted to ask how do you go about those, or if you switch your routines based on your needs (sketches vs speed painting backgrounds etc). The notes there were very interesting, seeing the mental exercise.
Pretty sure you have a fKTON of stuff on your plate, so please don't feel obligated to respond quickly or even at all. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read my message and for all the time you take to respond in general. Love reading your responses <3
Take care, ok? <3
I'm glad the animation made you feel better! I'll put the answer under the Keep Reading thingy.
I'm not entirely sure... I think I don't study as much as I should/could. I mostly learn as I go. Standalone studies are helpful, I'm just drawn to doing things that are more fun/satisfying to me or things that actively progress my creative goals. Imperfect illustrations for my stories, and incomplete research for worldbuilding! Many people learn faster than I, and those people do a lot more studies than I, but I have no info on whether they have more fun than I. Dopamine is rocket fuel, so it's important. :)
I'm always on the lookout for reference pictures, but I study almost only when I have a practical goal in mind, I guess. Studying is part of my job too, I think? As an indie concept artist I'm supposed to build a hoard of references and pull several new/sensible things out of them, and I think part of this process is understanding the material, and revisiting even what I already know. Illustration is similar. If I'm commissioned to draw an anthro alligator, it's time to study gators. It's not separate from work.
I mean, straightforward version: I wake up at 03:30, make coffee, and start working for myself until the paying work starts, lol. Brain is fresh before noon, and tired late in the evening just like everyone else's. It also helps that the city more or less shuts up at 4am.
The studies with the redlines... I do them when I fancy drawing characters or creatures but feel out of shape. I can get discouraged, feel like I forgot how to draw. I sketch if I plan to sketch, and paint if I plan to paint or want to study colors
Drawing live models helps. Studying videos of people and things in motion. Hopping down rabbit holes about how/why things work (e.g. flintlock, Davy lamp, mansard roof). Drawing from refs. Hoarding refs. Trying different mediums (e.g. charcoal, 3D, etching).
Small screenshot of one of my ref boards for the animation; I'd say I studied it a lot. How clothes move, what are good clothes, how do good clothes move, lion/tiger + human + eagle anatomy (from specific angles during specific motions if/when possible), how to dive roll, proper sprinting form, how to survive falling from a great height, spearfighting, pole vaulting, poledancing, lighting, colors, environment, kicked-up sand in motion, spear types, emu/cassowary/griffon vulture feet, etc. I didn't draw studies, unless you count the animation itself (I would).
