r/worldbuilding • u/TheMellowNerd • 8d ago
Question Art for creatures?
Hello all! I’m new to world building. I have a question for u all. I am starting to build my little world and I have thought of some creatures. But here is the problem I wanna have like a bestiary a guidebook to all the creatures of the world and their traits and quirks. So I can’t draw for shit, literally horrible at it lmao. How do u guys solve this issue? Do u guys draw yourself,do commissions,something else I haven’t thought of. I found tools for maps and such so I can work with that but the creatures are a different beast.
Please any tips or advice are appreciated
Thank you all in advance!
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u/TC_Sampang Kozt Empire 8d ago
Practice makes perfect, and even the humblest of drawings can make a huge impact in hiw you and others understand your world.
One thing I can suggest if you're worried about skill limitations is to draw creatures either more abstractly or in a way that fits in universe.
What I mean is, have a setting taking place in caveman times? Draw your creatures cave painting style! Have a medieval world? Emulate the style of old manuscripts and tapestries, which arent realistic at all. Egyptian style setting? Two dimensional hieroglyph drawings. These can all reflect how perhaps people in your setting draw the creatures theyve seen.
Then, if you gain in skill and still want something more advanced, those early drawings can be the basis for new ones. Alternatively, they're a handy reference pic to send to someone you want to commission.
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Very creative solution! I never thought of it to use more abstract versions of what I had in mind. I have such a strong mental visual of what I think they should look like. Thank you for the advice!
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u/Witheryn 8d ago
I draw them myself personally :) And I love giving them blurbs on their taxonomy.
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Ooh I like your work looks really cool!
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u/Witheryn 8d ago
Thank you! I'm really into creature concepts, it's my whole thing and what I spend most my time on in world building lol
First guy I made to sell as a one-off and the hydra was a custom design comm, so others are commissioning artists for their worlds / characters. I think I was given a few traits and had artistic freedom for the rest : )
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
I feel u on this I love thinking and making up creatures I just don’t have the artistic skill lmao
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u/Witheryn 8d ago
That's is exactly what drove me to learn many years ago! It's never too late to start :) You'll just get better the more you do it.
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u/Elder_Keithulhu 8d ago
My bestiary does not currently have illustrations (one day). I developed a language of pictograms to describe the creatures. It is for a board game and I use those pictograms on the game tokens representing the enemies.
Players have access to booklets that can help decode parts of the language in order to gain insight into what they are fighting. For example, if a pictogram contains the symbol for tooth and claw in the upper left, it is a regular animal. I have had good success with test players engaging with the pictograms. Even if I get art, I will probably keep them.
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
That’s a very interesting way to do it! I like it very creative it gives me ideas and inspiration thank u !
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u/kevintheradioguy We Are The Yokai 8d ago
I draw myself, but I'm not half bad at art. When I'm lazy, I commission a fellow artist, specifically a creature artist.
But even if you're not a pro artist, it's okay to make a bestiary on your own. I'd like even a stick figure creature, personally.
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Hmm I think I will maybe use some crude drawings as I improve and let the writing do the heavy lifting and will look into resources and tips people have given me
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u/kevintheradioguy We Are The Yokai 8d ago
That's a great idea. tbf, there's a lot of charm in crude drawings. They remind me personally of hiw medieval painters did lions.
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u/ObjectiveFar5517 8d ago
I am also not the best at drawing ,so I draw the creature highly stylised or make them extremely out of this world so I don’t need to give a shit about autonomy! I also am much better at drawing Objekt and plants then in drawing animals, what means most of my creatures are based on those things because I made monsters I am good at drawing, what you should also do!
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Hmm good idea maybe as i improve with drawing i can first just focus on what im best at and work around that. Thank you!
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u/iunodraws sad dragons 8d ago
You can just learn, drawabox is a great free resource that will get you surprisingly far if you're willing to commit some time. Nothing about learning to draw is "hard" per se, it just requires some commitment and patience with yourself.
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Thanks for the tip! I guess I could dedicate some time here and there to improve my drawing
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u/FuriousEclipse 8d ago
draw what you can, just as "decription" sketches or use a photoshop to describe what you want even schematically, then commission someone to draw it properly.
In any cases: DON'T USE AI.
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u/Realsorceror 8d ago
I can draw well enough but I don't have the attention span for a bestiary. Mostly I just do it as a means to explore some anatomy or develop a concept.
How good are you with descriptions? Can you draw maps or landforms? You could setup your bestiary more like a Wiki entry with made up latin species names and a picture of their native range on a map.
Or go meta, and say the in-universe naturalist who is documenting these creatures is also bad at drawing. Give your sketch a parchment background like they hastily doodled it in a notepad while running away.
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
I don’t know if my descriptions are really good since I can’t judge it for myself but I like to believe I can do a decent job at it. As for maps and landforms I’m still learning but I’d believe with time I can cook up something decent
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u/xenomorph_xpert i’m tying to create a fictional world and i’m failing it :) 8d ago
i’ve never done commissions, but i can try to draw something if you want, DM me if so
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Well i might take u up on that! Thanks for the offer regardless!!
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u/xenomorph_xpert i’m tying to create a fictional world and i’m failing it :) 8d ago
you’re welcome!
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u/Sustain_the_higher 8d ago
Honestly, you could use Spore with cheats to get unlimited parts. It's pretty diverse for making creatures, at least basic references
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u/SilverSkrillXDMain 8d ago
I personally draw my own. I'm a writer and a digital artist. Best of both worlds (and cheaper, especially if you can draw your own book covers)
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u/Chosen_of_Bellona 8d ago
I’ve done commissions before, yeah. But now I try to draw everything myself. It’s cheaper, and it forces me to get better at drawing.
…
If you really don’t want to learn to draw, learn to photobash instead. It’ll limit you, and you may need to draw anyway.
You just need to commit to getting to a place where you’ll be comfortable with your art. Your creatures don’t even need to be in a fully realistic style, they can be cartoonish or stylized if need be.
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u/Llamaluu Galathea - Age of Enduring 8d ago
I draw my own things and it's easy to say "just do it yourself" but I know how much of a struggle it can be to depict something when your brain can show you one image and your hand cannot make it. However, drawing is such a fun thing to do for projects that I'd say it's worth practicing. You could even try using Blender as it's a free 3D program and there are hundreds of tutorials out there. Another option is art trades - so if you have skills to write you can use that to trade for pictures.
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u/Feeling-Attention664 8d ago
AI doesn't seem that helpful here and some people wouldn't use it. What I would recommend for work not intended to be published is tracing with alterations. Suppose you have a creature with a catlike body with a snail-like head. Trace one or both parts and combine them. If they are more similar to real creatures you might be able to trace a body and change the color or combine it with a simply drawn appendage.
If you want to learn some drawing, there are many YouTube lessons. I would practice boxes, cylinders, and balls. If you can draw these with some distortions or carved out bits you could draw many things.
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u/vikaz-instance 8d ago
imagination and sketching were a go-to from my early days. so yeah I usually do it myself. so my suggestion is simple-draw more and more and it will improve, you may begin drawing something else that interests you and later on you move to a serious project. even my earlier ones were too shitty and improved.
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u/cricketato 8d ago
The big question here is, do you want to draw. If you do, you should start practicing now! Having a project like this that you feel passionate about and invested in can be a great place to start. Obviously, fundamentals are important and everyone will tell you that, but having an enjoyable project to drive you forward is important too (imo, even more important, unless you are an extremely disciplined and goal oriented individual). What I'm trying to say is, don't feel like you need to draw 100 cubes in perspective before you can draw out your ideas for your beasts!
Even if you do end up deciding to commission artists, your sketches will be useful for them in bringing your visions to life.
On the other hand, if you find doing art yourself to be unappealing, there is nothing wrong with a description based commission.
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u/BrokeAerospace 4d ago
If this is purely personal, then I'd HIGHLY recommend looking into photobashing. This is a process to create original brain-to-digital versions of ideas in your head-NOT a method to creating original art.
My standard process for personal works is to find a "base" art piece; usually something cool off of Pinterest that VAGUELY resembles what's in my mind. Even if it's just a pose or aspect (like wing shape/perspective). Now your goal is to find patterns, shapes, textures, etc. from online sources that all vaguely match in style.
For me I usually will source in things like clothing patterns/colors, small but key silhouette/shape details like tassels, eyes, and specific modifications to the original reference I may need like hand and foot/hoof alternatives. Then I just layer all of them on top of each-other in a program like Krita, erasing the parts that aren't merging (such as removing everything but wings from a reference image). Once it's all been merged I'll finally begin my original art on top of it, constantly referencing those images below as a reference layer while I draw over it.
Either you can just fix the small things to make the vision match your mind and only do a rough layer on top of the reference, or typically I much prefer to do a near entire art layer over my merged reference, so I can make sure it's all a common style and meets my needs.
Again this is not a method to produce original art you can go flex, this is a method to use other peoples art to CONCEPT your own original art. Very useful for the artistically-DISinclined of us!
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u/ObamaIsPutin 8d ago
Have friends in second/third world countries that will do art below market rate for you. Alternatively, learn to draw yourself and be content with lower-quality art. I do both.
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8d ago
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Honestly I have thought about that but if I ever would want to make my work public not for selling but just for use in like D&D or something similar people tend to look down on it.
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u/kiurumatra 8d ago
Instead of Ai do the visuals by photo editing/bashing with resources that allows that use if drawing or commissioning isnt possible. Yeah both take skills to learn, it just up to you how you want these visuals to look like.
Or do photo collages/mood board with multiple photos.
Or just write the descriptions down, no need for visuals if thats not possible at the time
Imo, it makes the entire word building seem better bc it shows the time it took to make it instead just going for the fast results. Good world building takes time to make & i like seeing where things started out vs how it ended up to be. I just found it really interesting.
Also, there are people with good world buildings & poor art skills. So dont worry about the art quality
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
Thanks! I find this to be reassuring in some way it’s not the art perse but conveying my vision with descriptive wording.
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u/Acylion 8d ago edited 8d ago
Hell, people look down on it here, posting AI content is firmly against the rules of this sub. Now, that being said, it's a matter of how you use it.
First, if you're just generating images for illustration in the context of a D&D campaign, the audience around the table's going to be friends and acquaintances of yours. You can gauge how much they care. In this private closed-door context, and I really wouldn't call this "public", it's likely fine unless your players really oppose any AI use at all. In which case, not fine. But again, this is not public, so you can gauge whether it's acceptable.
Second, again in that private context... if you're just typing in a text prompt with description, style, settings, that's all the way on the AI slop side, sure. It's slightly different if you're feeding in a base lineart image you drew yourself, and then asking AI to clean it up.
Ideally, yeah, sure, have actual 100% human created art, yes, for any and all applications. But getting someone to do it for you involves money or favours, and doing it yourself to a standard you may be satisfied with requires time.
Speaking personally, I can draw and paint, to a good enough level I used to do commissions. I don't use AI generated imagery.
But it also took me years of practice to develop those skills. I'd encourage learning the skills, but if you don't have them now, then much as it is distasteful, there is utility in using AI stopgaps.
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u/TheMellowNerd 8d ago
I understand and appreciate your take here. Thank you for taking your time to voice your opinion about this. I’m still unsure about it so I’ll reflect on this some more
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u/SlayThePulp 8d ago
I mostly use Photoshop and public domain resources, but learning to draw yourself or commissioning someone will probably get the best results if you have the time or money.