Rahul Nagaraj | Creatures and Fantasy 2023

The Mantisfly

The Mantisfly is the mechanical fusion of a Praying Mantis and a Dragonfly (2 of my favorite insects). It has the long hooked front limbs and sweeping hind appendages of a mantis, with the body structure and wings of a dragonfly, and the head of both creatures combined.

The Mantisfly was built at the worktable of a woodshop worker whose hobby is to design and 3D print little terrariums. The woodland environment consists of these printed plastic pieces, painted to mimic wood, stone and moss. 

The lights on the insect are powered by 4 AA batteries nestled in its long cylindrical appendages. The glowing mushrooms and wooden turntable are battery powered as well. The creator used forceps and a magnifying glass to carefully position every piece to their liking. There was a bit of a paint spill in the bowl but since it ended up looking like a swampy water body, the creator decided to keep it as part of the biome.

Designing my own creatures is one of my go-to prompts for when I am doodling and it is something that I have always and will always love. After completing the game, Hollow Knight, I was very inspired by the buglike characters that inhabited the world. So for my next project, I wanted to design a robotic insect that combined characteristics of real bugs and was also structurally and functionally feasible.  

Due to my background in electronics engineering, I had some experience with knowing what parts would be required for a robot of this kind, so I began brainstorming the ways in which this idea could work. Eventually I had the above concept sketch ready after working out the wing mechanism system, and the sensors and power sources that the insect would require. The concept was then simplified to suit the shape language that I was planning to go with for the environment that the bug would inhabit.

The Mantisfly was my first Hard Surface Modeling project and shown above are a few renders with a wireframes shown. It was also the first time I used Substance Painter so texturing this piece to get the look I wanted was an enjoyable process.

I knew that I wanted the wings to be magical and colorful but not too distracting. I ultimately decided that to have them subtly reflect different colors based on the direction from which they were being looked at. I set up my own custom shader using Maya's hypershade to make the direction of view influence the wings' reflectivity.

Since this project came along pretty early in my education, I taught myself to rig and animate the insect to have it hover over the bowl to add to the whimsical feeling of the piece. All of the assets were modeled, rigged and animated in Autodesk Maya.

I was responsible for creating all aspects of this project :)

Archivist Access

The Archivist Access was a 2D illustrated concept made by artist Mukhlis Nur, who states that the item is a legendary key bestowed by the Lore Mistress of the Enlightened Hall. She is an ancient entity known as a 'Dragonaut' who lives in the Kroma Grand Library's Inner Sanctum and is the last of her kind who protect the sanctity of knowledge and ancient wisdom. 

I interpreted the artist's work and recreated the Keysword granting access to the Inner Sanctum in 3D. The Archivist Access is a sentient creature that wields itself as a weapon and protects the arcane secrets from falling into the wrong hands. It grants access to the Library's Inner Sanctum to only those worthy of being in the presence of the Lore Mistress Jana.

Above are some renders showing more detailed textures on the blade and on the creature perched on the hilt. The rune dial spins to rotate the blades into the correct position before plunging itself into the Access Point to the Enlightened Hall.

The base mesh was modeled, rigged and animated in Autodesk Maya, and details were sculpted in Zbrush. Textures were made in Substance Painter and renders were run in Marmoset Toolbag and Redshift for Maya. The chains were simulated in Maya using a dynamic hair curve and the animation was baked onto the chain's joints. The prop is completely game ready and can be imported into Unreal Engine as a skeletal mesh.

The library's bookshelves were created using MASH in Maya. I wanted to build a completely procedural asset, so I used Maya's node editor to manipulate properties of the asset and created a control to manipulate the bookshelf's height and width. As the width is increased, more books are added and shelves are expanded horizontally. As the height is increased, books and shelves are added vertically. The colors and number of books are also customizable with easy-to-use sliders.

This was the final look of the piece, rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 3.

Concept Art Credit to Mukhlis Nur: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Nx1OBg

I was responsible for all other aspects of this project :)

Thank you for your time!