The Gnomon Workshop – Introduction to Creature Design Volume 1-2

Blockbuster creatures and monsters all start somewhere: With a sketch. Senior Character and Creature Concept Artist Kyle Brown demonstrates the industry-proven workflows he’s mastered through working on high-profile creature designs for film, television, games, and advertising projects. His 3.5-hour workshop demystifies the process of bringing creatures to life, with Volume 1 dedicated to the sketching and idea-exploration phase.

Before delving into the world of creature design, you’ll encounter many questions. How do you bring an unimagined creature into existence? How big, small, dangerous, or strong should it be? What environment will the creature be occupying and what role does it play? Will it have any unique skills or traits? Kyle discusses how, by applying fundamental design principles you can build a solid foundation to work from, and ultimately create a creature that will resonate with audiences — while still feeling fresh and original.

Kicking off with the initial research and methodology phase, Kyle shows the importance of using references to serve as a spark for a new design, inspiring new shapes while always rooting design decisions in real-world anatomy and physiology. The workshop then moves into silhouette exploration using simple two-value construction to focus on shapes. Advanced thumbnailing follows, where Kyle applies secondary forms while ensuring that everything still reads at a small, bite-sized scale.

The following exploratory process takes the initial thumbnails and fleshes them out into more resolved sketches, varying the shape and design language to create multiple iterations for a creature brief. To complete the workshop, the final design is translated into a three-quarter pose for the final presentation — whether it’s for your portfolio or a client.

Watch Introduction to Creature Design: Volume 2 With Kyle Brow to explore how to color your creature concepts in Photoshop.


Senior Character and Creature Concept Artist Kyle Brown returns with Volume 2 of his Creature Design workshop to share his coloring and texturing techniques for Photoshop. With Volume 1 dedicated to the sketching and idea-exploration phase, Volume 2 now focuses on the core skills at the foundation of creature design and discusses the differences between real-world materials and textures that can help to achieve photorealistic results and bring concept sketches to life.

Kyle revisits the original reference used to create imagined shapes in Volume 1 and this time puts them to work to show how to apply color and texture to designs. Taking the final creature concept from Volume 1, Kyle’s first color demonstrations reveal how to rapidly ideate using different color combinations and materials to flush out design options. He then shares quick and efficient methods for using some of Photoshop’s simple yet effective tools to create an additional color option on the same design. You’ll learn how to convey multiple conceptual ideations to a client for feedback, providing them with a wide net of options to see what works and what doesn’t.

Chapters 4 – 7 show Kyle’s approach to designing a brand new creature from start to finish using the lessons from both volumes. Kyle showcases every decision — warts and all — including both the successful ideas and mistakes made through the designing process. His demo focuses on a non-destructive workflow.

The final chapter offers a bonus lesson where Kyle shares his armor- and weapon-design techniques for those looking to add a further dimension to their creature designs.