MONSTROUS HUMAN

I took the time again and dived into lighting even though contest time is over. Light is (almost) everything when it comes to presenting the art work. I had a lot of fun with  experimenting around. Also I created a ground of tiles to get a better feeling for cold laboratory of Dr. Frankenstein.

First time that I did a render pass like this in Zbrush. I am happy with the polypaint but the light is still in progress. Glad that I could participate in this amazing challenge. A lot of lessons learned!

THE STORY - BEHIND THE EXPERIMENT

Jamal (32) suffers under «Dissociative Animalistic Identity Disorder», short «D.A.I. Disorder».  He is considered as freak and misfit of society - a real underdog. Therefore Jamal is lost in the world of humiliation. He feels dehumanized and rejected by society. 

Frankenstein tells Jamal that there is a way to «tame» his crying animal souls. After some exchanges Frankenstein invites Jamal to his working place - the Zoo laboratory - a special laboratory Doctor Frankenstein requested for science purposes. It is also called "The Taming Chamber". Jamal agrees to the experiment. He is full of hope that his animal souls and therefor his behavioral disorder can be regulated. One day Jamal is put to an artificial sleep in the taming chamber by the doctor. All of a sudden Jamal’s body starts to shake and initiates his body to deform. The doctor can not intervene in time and «unleashes» the full strength of all animal souls at once... 

The monster is born!

(The story is inspired by the movie "Split", the movie "Joker" and "Lady M.")

Imagining the transformation: The muscles start to grow extremely and rapidly. The face distorts and therefore deforms the skull. Its venes start to pop out. The heavy weight of the shoulders pulls the upper body down.

CRAZY LIKE A MONKEY! Now it was time to adjust posture and face. In my imagination, I pictured how the actors body - specifically the face - is morphing slowly but steady. Since human (homo sapiens sapiens) originate from apes, I decided to go at first into the direction of an ape-like creature.

My intention was to keep a bit of Ace' characteristics e.g. bald head, pointed ears, full lips. So I tackled the transition from the human main posture to an animalistic like shape. To make myself free from ape shapes I played around and added some gazelle horns.

At first I created the base: head, trunk, legs and arms. I "squished" spheres, modified and repositioned them, a quite simple step one would think. Whats not that simple is to nail the proportions at the beginning. The fantastic thing is I just needed some landmarks to start distorting the body. Sculpting the basic structure of a human being helped me to get a plausible start for the "mutated" Actor Ace Ruele. 

In my eyes the ideation rooted on the research is a fundamental step. Now it was mood board time! Before even starting the creature sculpt, I took everything I could in account. From the director's notes to the provided actor footage.

I dived into pinterest for an inspiring image hunt. I looked for fascinating elements of animals. I specified on animals that could fit to the actors proportions and movement . In between I turned back to the Mary Shell's 'Frankenstein' monster to evaluate the appearance of the original. Eventually my research brought me to existing creature concepts to mix and mesh ideas.

I studied the provided footage of Ace Ruele (the professional mocap actor). I took the mocap shots as a base. By connecting the dots, I got rid of noise and details. By creating shapes from the dots and silhouettes I got a sense where to take the creature.

In the first step I focused on the director's brief introduction. For me it was important to identify the key requirements. This really helped me to get a feeling for the mood and solid understanding what the director is looking for.  Let the imagination grow.