A Gnomon Guide to Creation Characters and Worlds from Scratch

The two-part video workshop demonstrates the creation process from “absolutely nothing prepared beforehand” to the elaborate characters, their story, and their world.

The Gnomon Workshop has released a video guide recorded by the leading concept artist and illustrator Iain McCaig. The guide is devoted to creating characters starting from their initial story and comes in two parts: Creativity: Story & Character Development and Creativity: Creature & World Design.

In three-hour Volume 1 of the guide, McCaig explains the entire process of character and story development teaching how to elaborate ideas from scratch. He starts his first video with “absolutely nothing prepared beforehand” revealing the step-by-step full creating process resulting in "an original last-man-on-Earth Frankenstein love story" that McCaig has named "PYG". This part of the guide is drawing the main attention to keyframes and sketches which lead to the detailed creating concept design process for the two lead characters: Pyg and his long-lost wife.

In Volume 2 of the guide, McCaig delves into the creation of Pyg’s robot wife along with a mysterious alien creature. He also shares the creation process of Pyg's world that is "a rather strange art studio-laboratory environment". The guide also includes a bonus chapter with the reading of the entire Pyg's story, which comes along with an animatic montage of the keyframes and concept designs created throughout the workshop featuring an original soundtrack that was an initial inspiration to the tale.

Iain McCaig has worked in the entertainment industry for more than 40 years contributing key designs to many film characters including the Star Wars' Padmé Amidala and Darth Maul. Among his credits there also are Terminator 2, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Jungle Book.

The two-part guide is available via an online subscription to The Gnomon Workshop and costs $49/month or $490/year.

You can learn more about the workshop Volume 1 and Volume 2 on Gnomon's official website. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit pageour new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

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