Monster Challenge (2D Category) - 'Sleek'

I did not like the way I did the shadow and layout from my previous concept so I ended up duplicating the shading group and filled it black. Then I distorted the shadow and added some blur so the lines are not too sharp around the edge. 

I have finished with shading my monster and now I need to decide whether to add colour or add a background to establish what environment my monster is in. 

Hair/Fur - The process on make the hair/fur texture was very repetitive, where I simply made small, faster strokes with a black colour then did the same thing for a light grey colour.   

Hand - I did a similar process I did with the shoulder and torso by just going between light grey and black to make a nice gradient with a bit of texture. 

Once I was happy with the shading, I thought I would also add small details: 

Whiskers -  I looked back at the hyena reference I was using and notice I forgot to add whiskers and saliva. It was simply me using a small brush with opacity and adding in the whiskers and saliva. 

Tattoos - The actor Ace Ruele, has some interesting tattoos which I thought would be a nice detail to add to my monster. I simply got a dark blue colour, made the pattern and change the layer to overlay with a low opacity to make it look like the ink is part of the skin. 

I fill in my rough sketch with different shades to tell the different from the antlers, mushrooms and the body.

The idea for the shading portion was to shade each part differently so tell what texture the animal or human part. For example, fur and hair can have repeated strokes in one direction. 

Head - I started with drawing the outline from my rough sketch into a clipping mask layer. At one point I was shading the eyes and thought 'It would be cool to see them glow.' And I did a test to see how it looked which help give me as reason for the rim light on the nose and mushrooms. 

Mushrooms - The mushrooms was the most time consuming since I needed to figure out how to differentiate from the face and the antlers. I then thought of using spirals to help with the different shading.   

Antlers - I wanted to add some dimension to the antlers with the help of lighting. 

Stitching - What I did for the stitching was I drew the stitching with black and then added highlight using white with opacity and then when back to black for shadows. 

All in all, its is a work in process but, so far so good. 

Starting my rough sketch with images of each animal and human part as reference. 

I wanted to see how I can exaggerate the poses from the actor to my sketch. As well as, see what human parts I have either added and exaggerated. 

Sketch (Top) - I wanted to see what the monster looks like when it is standing. I also wanted to add a creepy aspect to my monster compared to the confident pose of the actor. 

Sketch (Bottom) - Similar to the top sketch, I wanted to see how far I have exaggerated compared to the reference. This is most likely going to be the pose I start shading and rendering from. 

First Image - They are my initial silhouette sketches while using my reference chart. 

Second Image (Left) - I wanted to experiment more on sleek poses to make my monster look quick and an interesting silhouette. I also did some more research on other animals like Hyenas, Spider Monkeys and Aye-ayes, I even used extincted animals like the Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) because of its massive jaw and plants/fauna like fungi. 

Second Image (Right) - This was my trying out the fungi growing on the body concept. I wanted to make it look interesting but not add too much where it does not interfere with the monster's movement. 

At the bottom of the page is me trying to get all the human and animal parts that I have used into this concept and combine them into a good pose for the monster. 

For this challenge, I want to go for a horror, slim looking creature. What I used as reference are animals that are either quick or have interesting silhouettes and body proportions.