Hey, Jussi! I've worked on this a couple hours. I made the dreams on the chaos side a bit darker than in the thumbnail. What are your thoughts on that? If you're going to be working on this today, log on to messenger and let me know, so I can send you the PSD.

creature design

One more nigthmare update

repost

quick

Here's just some refinement for the comp. Traced over your critters and cocoon real quick and start on some shape design of the field and bg which isn't working yet:)

Nightmare!

What do you think? A bit more creature-like, perhaps? Maybe their shapes become harder and sharper when they're scared of the nightmare?

simplifying and focal order

Hey Cory,

I worked on top of your composition real quick. What I basically did was to simplify it and added the focal read order which I felt would tell the story.

I simplified the left one. To create peace I took the clutter away. Now it needs more detail of course but just wanted to make them clear. Left one peace, right one chaos.

Does this make sense? Let me know. See you soon.

Here are two more from me. I'm trying to keep Dorian's advice in mind and make these more like two halves of the same image. The first one is more flat and graphical than what we've been doing so far, while the second is more like what we've been sketching all along. I tried to give the nightmare more of an arc to its body to go along with your shark idea.

Inspiration

Just came across this pretty thingie

Nightmare design

Here's what I imagine for the nightmare. A hulking, clawed, rough beast. Its "head" is in shadow, showing only a jagged abstract silhouette and some glints that may be eyes.

I like your ideation, and I may have a few thumbnails to show by the time the night is through.

thumbnails shark attack

Here's a few thumbnails on the shark attack theme we talked about.

The first one is a setup for what's to come. The trees in the background are softer shaped, the field is calm and shapes are mellow. The cocoons could establish some scale. The critters further away is where the nightmares hunting area is. We don't show the nightmare much at this point to allow the fiewers imagination to create more tension. We could show the critters in the cages in its back at this point but it might not be necessary at all since the next picture shows that it is hunting for the critters.

The next image is where everything goes haywire. The trees in the background turn into chaos, the field close to the attacking nightmare becomes waves of desperation and chaos. The creature itself could have some blurryness to create movement. We could have a cocoon sit close to the camera to show a critter sleeping in but its facial expression could be in pain.

These thumbs definitely still need work getting the camera angle, over lap and value distribution right plus of course the shape design.

Lemme know what you think. We should go for having our thumbnails picked up by friday and have most of creature design done so we can start painting soon. But there's no reason to polish a turd so the thumbs, angles, shape design and value distribution should be solid before that.

Dreams and more composition thumbs

Some compositions. I'm trying to get really into the abstraction to make something that'll work.

Some dream designs! Eager to hear what you think of these, since I'm not sure myself how successful they are. I think some of the bottom ones are too weird and goofy and obviously Shaun Tan inspired.