Comment 96862

It can be a bit time consuming, but I find I only love my characters the more time I put into them, so that doesn't bother me haha. I try to start with what I want to gear the dragon's race to- for example, the dragon I've been posting art of recently, Kamon, was made to fill the role of a two headed aquatic wyvern. From there, I try to find a few animal references to take design inspirations based off of what the dragon is meant to do. With Kamon, he's meant to balance aerial capabilities while prioritizing swimming, so I looked to fish and water fowl. Some of the animals I considered were pin tail ducks, commorants, arrowanas, and koi, but I ended up picking the red-throated loon and betta fish.

Studying the unique aspects of the animals can lead to creative traits, strengths, and limitations to include in the design, such as Kamon's "labyrinth" gills, a reverse of the organ of the same name found in betta fish. From there its a matter of finding where to include traits, how to balance contributions from the different animals, and seeing where works best to do something else. This approach can be very handy when I have a difficult angle because I can reference those animals some to see how to handle it.