I didn’t know what I wanted the llama to look like so I started by drawing the outlines of real llamas to help me get the general shape so that I could then draw miniature stylised llamas.
I wanted to see if I could draw something cute but recognisable.
Out of the two drawings above, I drew the darker lined llama first. It was too realistic and not cute enough for my liking, so I drew the smaller one next to it. This one looks much closer to what I want with its size and proportions but I felt that it wasn’t recognisable as a llama. It did make the idea of short legs more important for the design though.
After not much success, I started creating AI generated concepts of a llama using Dream by Wombo and DeepAI, with varying degrees of success. As our game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and the llamas have mutations, it meant the AI generators could really go ham with what we could accept. And they did. The prompt “short legs” apparently meant three legs. Below are a few examples of art generated by the AIs, and you can find more here.
We ended up picking a more casual design that we wanted to take from but with some adjustments. The full body image below was our choice, however, we decided to shorten the hairdo. It is also an example of “short legs”. I didn’t really like the eyes though, so I decided to change them to those of the image next to it.
The idea of a derpy tongue hanging out was also suggested. The adjacent image is what I drew using the group feedback and AI images as references. I added the mismatched eyes as my own idea and we all like it. It’s cute, it’s derpy, and it’s strangely menacing.
I started working on the character rotation of the llama, drawing front, back, and side views of it. The front and rear views are alright but I really didn’t like the side view I drew. It looks more like a dog than a llama, and that’s after changing different body proportions to make it look somewhat comfortable on the eyes. I hate it. I needed to change it before I modelled the llama.
I went back and redesigned the side views of the llama. They don’t quite line up with the front and back views but I think they are close enough that I can mess around during the modelling to find what works best for the overall model.