Hey, great finish to the ideation process! Thanks for the lesson Scott. I just wanted to share, that I followed this process for a small job I did which had nothing to do with creatures but was a crest for a school and it was very well received by the client. The client had little idea what it should look like and asked for visual inspiration to start with. I did "Scotts" brainstorming, added little visual representations for small portions of the crest and kept asking questions on the A3 (sheet) with pencil. Like, what animal could fit the school, the region, the history. Which elements of the city, landscape could be associated and so on. From the first A3 sheet, I let them choose and discard elements they liked or didnt liked and did follow-up sheets which combined or concentrated on what they found fitting. This continued to the digital stage, different shapes for the crest, forms and colours, which led to a satisfactory design for the client. What I only realized throughout the process, that these form of milestones (rough ideas, refined ideas, digital versions, variants, etc) collected on sheets of paper actually helped me to plan my hours, costs and feedback meetings with the client. When I had my loose ideas in sketchbooks, digitally, or on loose single sheets, it was sometimes difficult to communicate which effort you put in the final design because it was so spread out. The A3 sheet method visualizes the process not only for me, but also for the client. They felt great to have a big stock of ideas to choose from, felt included in the process and everybody was happy.

That tip about using the entire page and how the constraints of space end up motivating different designs is gold!