Norine's Concept Art

Creature design is one of my biggest passions. The following are some creatures I've made in stylized realism that I'm quite fond of. I studied animals, habitats, and anatomy to come to these conclusions. Each creature is grounded in reality to some extent. 

The idea for the Dormant Pangshura started with bringing insect anatomy together with reptilian anatomy. I wanted to create a large, slow-moving swamp creature that could fly using tortoise shells as beetle wings. As the concept developed during painting, those shells became more rocky to help the creature blend in with its environment.  

The Greater "Horned" Owl was made more as a terrifying creature you'd want to avoid in a video game or in a film. If you ignore it, it'll leave you alone. Provoke it and it will dive-bomb into you from the skies, taking you as its next meal. I wanted to create an intimidating owl creature with elements that made it feel almost like a dragon (without directly mimicking a dragon's physique). 

The Kartin Beast was made as a beast of burden. I wanted to make sure that this creature could fare in different environments, so I researched how most animals would tread difficult terrain (such as sand and snow). Having wider feet like a camel's would help it traverse these difficult terrains and its overall body type would help it feed during its long journey. 

I wanted to create a smaller creature that had to rely on safety in numbers to survive. The Scuttle Buggard mates for life and produces forty eggs per clutch and almost constantly reproduces. To show this familial aspect, I made sure to include two parents in the final painting along with eggs in a nest. Since these creatures feed on magma, I wanted to make sure the glowing effect would be conveyed in their anatomy.

Another of my passions is stylized art for mobile games. The following concepts are for a combo tower defense and mobile merge-3 game I'm making titled "Merging for Fensalir." The player acts as the swamp witch Ornella's apprentice and must collect ingredients for different potions and spells. The player must go collect mergible ingredients by playing through the tower defense side of the swamp, unlocking new areas after each new encounter. Ornella's companion, Squib provides side quests and shenanigans throughout the game, all the while hiding the fact that Ornella is up to something... evil?

In the last year, I helped create a few game demos for my collab class in school. Both games were featured at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco (2023). The game titles are "Plague" and "Brawler" and both were quite a hit at GDC.

I created props and VFX for "Brawler" and I created props, animations, and VFX for "Plague." Both game demos were created in Unreal Engine. I used Photoshop to create all my assets, animations and VFX.

This was an environment painting I did in class. An ancient goddess comes to see the damaged that humans have laid upon her lands. Amongst the desolation, a single tree is thriving with a human standing under it. The goddess reaches down to thank the human for "The Blessing."