Nature has long inspired artists of all kinds. For concept artists, the animal kingdom can be a rich source of ideas of character design and mech design.
But one artist has become a hit on social media with a direct approach to drawing on nature for her work. Connie Kang turns photographs of animals into human characters in relatable everyday scenes.
Based in Los Angeles, Connie has worked in illustration and concept art for the likes of Disney and Sega. In her personal work, monkeys and toads become gangsters, an egret becomes a fairy tale queen and a pair of ring-tailed lemurs become two prisoners wearing shackles.
But she doesn't merely anthropomorphise the animals to create something like a character from Zootopia. She uses their gestures and the shape, colours and composition of the original photos to inspire fully developed human characters with strong personalities.
The work was partly inspired photographer Gerrard Gethings’ side-by-side comparisons of pets and their owners, but she pays as much attention to personality and storytelling as to the aesthetics, resulting in illustrations where believable human characters seem to share emotions with their animal inspirations.
While monkeys make the most obvious translation into human character designs, Connie finds surprisingly human-like forms and gestures in cats, dogs, birds and even insects like the flamboyant rosy maple moth. Connie's skills in fashion illustration are also clear in her depictions with the animal photos often also inspiring her characters' clothing and overall style.
Connie has compiled some of her animal-to-human character designs in two books, Metamorph volumes one and two.
You can buy the books from her Etsy store and see more of her work on her Instagram profile.
