[bzv]

Gogogo!
Hope I can finish... going for work now :|

[cyl1981]

As requested, here are the steps I went through to come to my first draft.

Firstly define the silhouette, audiences should be able to identify what the author is portraying through the shape, very important to lay down a strong silhouette before moving forward.

I skipped a step here, but after the silhouette has been confirmed, one could move on to refine the structure of the design, but in this case I had references so I just simply pieced the structure of the creature from my references.

I need to point out though, it recommended to work from the references instead of using the references directly, most scenarios one would use the references directly are usually cases when you had to show the clients the ideas, but you just happen to be short on time to present your idea, although some client would still accept rough sketches, but sometimes there are just exceptions, so try to make your presentations as presentable as possible.

Once the basic structure has been defined, move on to refine the colors, one could also refine color and structure both at the same time, go for the method you find most comfortable with.

Once you have the first draft approved by your client, congrats now you can either move on to refine the details on your concept if it for an illustration case or start working on your modeling sheet if the design need to be transformed into a 3d model.

Hope these will help, fascinate me to see all the designs everyone comes up with through every events, keep the creativity going, and don't be shy to share your work flow too~

ps. sorry about the size of the image

[rob_powell]

GaussianBlur: I hope you don't mind, I did a paint over of your piece, I liked the concept, but a few issues were apparant. The paintover is the top image, and your original image is below for comparison.
I boosted the contrast on the beast, and strengthened the forms a little bit. Also a neat little trick is to add some fog to give the piece some atmospheric depth and boost the scale of your creature, it also pushes foreground elements foreward. Sometimes using birds will work as well to show scale, but they looked out of place in this particular image. I also changed a few things in the background to show the creature's silhouette better, and give some better flow. I got rid of the log in front of the creature cuz it flows away from your focal area. While I added a tree branch in the foreground to flow towards your creature, rather than vertically like you had. Finally I added a tiny bit of red to the creature's head and neck, and gave it more of a red eye, red is a very attractive colour, the human eye will usually look for the colour red first above all colours so adding it to your focal areas can help shift the focus to your liking, though be careful when adding it to objects in distance cuz red fades quite quickly in atmosphere.
Ok, now if you squint your eyes you will see how the piece reads more clearly than before. Also see how objects in the image now direct your eye towards focal regions. Once again I hope you don't mind, and hope you found this useful in some way.

[GaussianBlur]

@rob_powell—that is AWESOME, thanks a lot and no, I don't mind paintovers at all. I'm pretty unexperienced when it comes to both creature design and painting without a drawing, so I really appreciate the pointers. I know I entered a little late to get a lot of WIP crit, so thanks for going back and taking a look.