26th February

Today I started experimented with the civilized dragon like race .

I was going for a more elegant design to show them as the more civilized race.

I tried making the shape more sleek by making the body neck and tail one "S" shape.

I also experimented with variety in their body types to show them as more individuals in a society than a pack of animals that the humans would now be.

I also bounced the idea of the races being Dinosaurs and Cavemen off my peers as I thought civilized dinosaurs could also work and be more appealing.I drew a couple sketches of some generic dinosaurs which reminded me of "We're back a dinosaur story!" 

This idea didn't seem to work out for me as the dinosaurs would normally be much larger than humans as well as less elegant and harder to do things that people would normally be able to do due to their proportions like the dinosaur in Meet the Robinsons.

Then I started creating the look for the uncivilized humans,I wanted them to look brutish and less developed as well as more instinctual than their civilized dragon counterparts.

I looked in various sources and tried a few types of characters for the humans

First I went with a Caveman/Neanderthal like humans.

I took some reference of gorillas and hunched him over and practically on all fours to make them more animal like.

Second I tried lanky tribal humans hidden behind a mask and with a spear,I thought the mask would make the human more ambiguous and fear inducing for the civilized dragons.

After all this experimentation I decided to draw two characters to represent the two races I had.

A sleek dragon and a Human with a mix between the brutish cavemen and tribesman.

I think human character served his purpose as a menacing creature-like man but the dragon race wasn't quite working.

I talked with more peers and some old ideas kept coming back with the dragon's bodies being almost entirely human.

I had scrapped this idea earlier as I thought it looked quite weird for a dragon head to be on a human body but I believe it would help get my idea across better possibly.

So I talked with one of my tutors about this and got some reference on how I could go about the dragon race.

I think I will experiment with putting different dragon heads on human like bodies of different builds.

Setting:

 I'm thinking of the Dragons living in a city with stony cobble streets and being Victorian-like/1920's with technology as advanced as horse drawn carriages or possibly the first cars.

The humans on the other hand would be far behind in development with barely having huts or villages.

Story:

The original idea is that the peaceful civilized dragons living in their city would be terrorized and attacked by humans much like the dragons attacking humans in medieval stories.

The story starts with a bustling street of different build characters of the dragon race passing by.

An elderly dragon looks up toward the hills and see a faint figure in the distant.

He spots that its a human and is shocked.

He screams out "Humans!" and the once bustling city street is now in panic.

packs/hordes of humans rush down from over the hills and terrorize the city.

(I'm not sure whether to make the Humans carry torches to light the city on fire or if the humans can breathe fire like how dragons normally would)

One ending I thought of was that the city is destroyed leaving a few dragons in its ruins.The few remaining dragons become filled with rage and retreat into the mountains.Then the last dragons get their revenge on the humans hundreds of years later by becoming what they once feared and fight fire with fire (literally) and become the fearsome creatures the humans have stories about.

(This part would be set in medieval times,showing the generic stories about dragons coming to pass)

This ending would make the story cover many different ideas/morals.

Role reversal as the dragons and humans are in swapped roles.

Not judging a book by its cover as the stereotype of dragons and humans are broken and swapped.

Coming of age as the dragons become the mythical beasts we first expected.

The idea that the winners (the humans) of wars record history as they saw it.(the dragons being terrorizing beasts and dying out)

This ending however may water down the whole role reversal as they are put back into our expectations at the end.

Although it almost serves as a strange history of why dragons attack humans and why they were not developed as they were wiped out to practical extinction by the savage humans earlier in time.

I need to gather up my new images onto my moodboard so I will either post that in tomorrows blog or as a comment.

Edit: Dragon mood board added

I'm quite torn between cutesy and elegant dragon race and the elder chinese dragons

For my personal project I've been working on the forth part of my comic strip short story.

I'm extremely slow and I don't have too much time to work on it so I only got one background finished for it today.

Some of my other art I've been working on over the last holidays will be posted below,check out the link to my website or deviant art to see the rest.

My Deviantart

My Website

My personal best art I did in January.

The latest artwork I did (10th February)