CONCEIVE
Thumbnail Sketching is an excellent way to quickly explore concepts associated with your brief. You can sketch for one or two hours and work out multiple possible solutions to the design problem at hand. This is an essential step in the design process because creating a wide range of options ensures the best solution is found.
It is important to remember here that there are no wrong answers and they are not final products, so therefore should be relatively quick to generate.
The idea is that you keep on designing until you have at the very least, 10 different thumbnails. Annotate these and discuss your thought process, what works, what doesn't?
When designing a creature remember your first priority is to communicate, if your image is too complex, it will get in the way of this communication. Simplify any complex forms you've chosen from your reference map and produce a variety of silhouettes. Make them as simple as you can without losing the original images identity.
It is important to remember here that there are no wrong answers and they are not final products, so therefore should be relatively quick to generate.
The idea is that you keep on designing until you have at the very least, 10 different thumbnails. Annotate these and discuss your thought process, what works, what doesn't?
When designing a creature remember your first priority is to communicate, if your image is too complex, it will get in the way of this communication. Simplify any complex forms you've chosen from your reference map and produce a variety of silhouettes. Make them as simple as you can without losing the original images identity.