World Building 101: Preliminary Creature Design

I'd like to take a moment to appologise for missing last week's post. I apparently forgot to hit publish on this post and left it in draft status.

Moving on, this week, as previously promised we are taking a look at more concrete world building. This can be considered the "fun" part. I'm going to walk you through how I build a creature. While it often starts from a sketch, today we're going to look at it from the other angle I take.

The first step is to remember a few key things about our planet. Namely that it is warmer than Earth and has roughly the same gravity. This means that we are limited to some degree in where our creatures can go. We are unlikely to find a woolly mammoth roaming about on our hotter than Earth planet, and we are also unlikely to see elephant sized creatures flying through the air. Keeping those things in mind lets develop a small desert creature

The next step I take is to research where nature has gone before. Nature is incredibly creative and will almost always think of things you don't. I looked up "small creatures of the desert" and got this website. From there I take a look at many of the creatures listed and figure out how they survive the desert heat. I'm especially looking at the mammals, birds and insects, as I am interested in making a creature with some kind of coat.

What I notice immediately from the mammals is that they all have big ears. I remember from previous research that this is a great cooling adaptation. I decide my creature will have big ears, probably to the extent of a fennec fox:

However between the birds, insects and mammals the largest creatures are still quite small and svelte. So I know that these ears will be the largest part of my creature.

The next creature that captures my attention is the lappet-face vulture. I mess with the idea of using its featherless face for my creature, but toss it aside. I've settled that this creature will be a mammal, and a forager, not a scavenger in need of protection from rot. 

I make a few rapid fire decisions here, I like the idea of protective horns, as seen on the horned lizard and the pronghorn. I also like the general size of the kangaroo rat, and the general shape of the black-tailed jackrabbit. I now have an idea in my head about what my creature would look like, so I set off to draw it.

It takes a few sketches to get all the angles and everything right, but soon enough I have a good idea of the creature I am making.

At this point I start filling in details. What is it called? How big is it? What does it eat? All the general encyclopedic questions. Some of these will be hard to answer, having only made one creature in our world, so I will either skip it, or fill it in with made up nonsense that is subject to change.

Here are the questions I used and how I filled them out:

Name: Horned Cavret
Size: 6-9" long
Eats: Omnivore; mainly feeds on plants and insects
Habitat: Desert
Home: Small caves and crevices, or dug burrows

As you can see there is very little information at this point. But it is a start.