Creature Design Entry 2019

My Creature's concept and idea. 

The initial problems I had with my brief and drawings was giving or creating a story around my creature. I didn't want to create a generic monster that just stands and looks cool.

Even if it is a creature that lives in the background of a shortfilm or a game with no major role, it still needs to be convincing and believable. That was my challenge.

I did my best trying to breathe life into it so the viewer immerses him/herself into a story or could potentially create his/her own story around it for that matter. That was my ultimate goal. 

Here are moodboards that I made and used for my creature design.

My creature redesigns using photoshop for overpainting and redesigning. 

Using my drawing abilities and techniques to showcase an alternative idea that could be explored - if there is a short deadline or a quick idea needs to be explored on top of an already finished piece. This can be in turn, be quickly resculpted in ZBrush with a new head, or a new arm. 

This is the early pre-production stage. 

Drawing different designs in photoshop symmetry, which was a lot of fun. You can come up with a variety in a short amount of time. I began to narrow it down more looking at my brief build, notes and ideas. 

What can it do? Where does it live? Where does it come from? Is it neutral/hostile to humans?

 Here is an 3D block-out in 3D Coat from one of my sketches.

Here I tried to incorporate more 'insect' into my drawing to see if would give some interesting ideas that I could quickly sculpt in 3D Coat. At first I liked them, but I thought they looked very generic and I wanted to see if I could take something else and merge them.

This was a rough sculpt I designed trying to add more 'crustacean' into it. Using various crabs for design ideas.

I took my 3D Coat block-out and refined it in ZBrush, these are just raw renders from ZBrush PBR render. I ended up giving the arms a design from the mantis shrimp and ended up liking the idea better than crab claws. 

The problem that arose from this was the way it would catch and eat its prey. I figured out an idea of giving the abdomen a mouth that could crush the prey. The mouth could retract and close to protect itself. This could be its weak spot, if for example a player engages with it.

I generated a pose in ZBrush, giving it a simple look. Exported it back into 3D Coat.

I then created custom materials in 3D Coat and textured it also in paint room directly on to the pose. 

These are the raw textured 3D Coat renders without photoshop editing. I included some WIP shots from the texturing.

Work in progress compositing in photoshop. I start drawing a loose idea I have, try to use composition to the best of my ability. I then mix and photobash textures to fit. 

Quick narrative idea

Here are some unused exploration I had in ZBrush, but I didn't take them to full completion. 

A simple interchangeable workflow breakdown. I have proficiency in other 3D softwares as well, like Maya, Substance Painter and Keyshot for rendering.

Thank you for viewing.

Marcus I. Keil

Huge thanks to Milan Nikolic and his course from learnsquared that helped me push my ideas further!

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the photos used for references and moodboards, and that all rights belong to the original creator(s) of these photos. I do not claim to own them in this project and were only for references, not my actual project.