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+<section data-type="chapter">
+<h1 id="appendix-creature-design">Appendix: Creature Design</h1>
+<h1 id="appendix-creature-design-1">Appendix: Creature Design</h1>
+<p><em>This guide is by Zannah Marsh, who illustrated all of the figures you see in this book.</em></p>
+<p>If you aren’t sure how to start the “creature design” task for your Ecosystem Project, or if the thought of populating a multi-creature ecosystem feels daunting… don’t worry!</p>
+<p>You can start developing creatures using a few visual building blocks, like basic shapes and lines, and reuse them for different results. In a way, this design task is similar to programming, where code is reused and repurposed.</p>
+<p>Though p5.js draws shapes and lines easily, I recommend using paper and pencil to sketch out designs. Working directly on paper allows you to focus on your design, and to evaluate and compare iterations quickly. You won’t need to switch between working visually and writing code. Create your creature on paper first, then replicate it in code.</p>
+<p>The cartoonists Greg Stump and David Lasky suggest that nearly everything can be drawn with just “Nine Ingredients:”</p>
+<ul>
+  <li>The basics: circle, square, and triangle</li>
+  <li>The basics, stretched: oval, rectangle, and tall triangle</li>
+  <li>Extras: curved line, straight line, and dots</li>
+</ul>
+<p>Begin by drawing these nine ingredients on your paper. Easy, right?</p>
+<figure>
+  <img src="images/xx_1_creature_design/xx_1_creature_design_1.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<p>Now you can start putting these visual elements together to create a creature. Here’s a very basic design scheme, familiar to residents of Planet Earth:</p>
+<ul>
+  <li>A body</li>
+  <li>Two (or more) eyes</li>
+  <li>A mouth</li>
+  <li>Pairs of fins, wings, arms, or legs</li>
+</ul>
+<p>For this exercise, you’re creating beings that will live in or around a pond. You don’t need to make a “real” creature– you can invent something totally new! Any of the six basic shapes I mentioned can become the body of a character. Reuse the shapes and the extras to add features like eyes, legs, and wings. This simple drawing qualifies:</p>
+<figure>
+  <img src="images/xx_1_creature_design/xx_1_creature_design_2.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<p>Do we love this drawing? Is it perfect? Well, maybe not.</p>
+<p>But it’s important <em>not</em> to erase your work, even if you don’t like it. You’ll need all your drawings as data points you can reference as you iterate on your character. Think of creature design as the process of arranging visual elements and observing how they make you feel—how you respond to them, and what they suggest to you.</p>
+<p>Try varying elements, such as:</p>
+<ul>
+  <li>The size and shape of the eyes, and the distance between them.</li>
+  <li>The size, shape, and position of the mouth.</li>
+  <li>The size and roundness or narrowness of the body.</li>
+  <li>The length, shape or number of the legs or wings, and the angle and distance between them.</li>
+</ul>
+<p>Here’s an example of the original creature, with varying size, shape and position of body, eyes, legs, and wings.</p>
+<figure>
+  <img src="images/xx_1_creature_design/xx_1_creature_design_3.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<p>You’ll see that the form of your creature might suggest a behavior or feeling. Does your creature dart around, creep, or drift slowly? Does it have a huge mouth for gulping big meals, or a tiny mouth for nibbles? Does it have massive eyes for spotting tasty snacks (or for avoiding becoming someone else’s snack)? These observations may help you program your creatures’ behaviors in later chapters.</p>
+<figure>
+  <img src="images/xx_1_creature_design/xx_1_creature_design_4.png" alt="">
+  <figcaption></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<p>A few more tips… especially if this is the first time in years you’ve tried to “draw” anything.</p>
+<p>Like many of us, you may have enjoyed drawing as a kid, but gave up early when your skills didn’t match your vision. It can be hard to shake those feelings of not getting it “right.” A good way start is to lower the stakes by using scrap paper for your experiments—the back of an envelope, or last week’s shopping list.</p>
+<p>Remember, you’re just sketching ideas, not creating a masterpiece! If you feel tense before you even start, relax by making some scribbles or spirals on paper. Just get used to making marks first. This is like stretching before you exercise… artists do warm-ups too!</p>
+<p>You definitely also use digital tools, but one drawback to them is easy erasing and endless “undos.” If you obliterate everything you don’t like, you’ll lose opportunities to compare and learn from your drawings. When you’re working digitally, be sure to preserve your sketches and “mistakes.”</p>
+<p>So, grab a pen and some scrap paper, get drawing, and get ready to meet your creatures!</p>
+</section>