The Abomination

Frankenstein's Monster is a medical abomination. He should not exist, yet he does. Bringing a corpse back from the dead comes with profound effects to the physical and psychological ability of the vessel. None of them good. Only a madman would think to splice another species in with that corpse, yet here we are. Through Frankenstein's maniacal genius, he has done it. But it is nowhere near perfect. Far from it, in fact. He sought to combine the raw strength of a gorilla, with the sheer speed of an ostrich, and the brilliance of man. What he got was a lumbering husk of what was once a human. The physical weight of a gorilla's arm dragging him down. The spliced legs of an ostrich driving daggers into his shins with every step. The remaining pieces of himself shriveling to near uselessness. There is nothing left of his mind except the deep, primal understanding that he should not be. He has been brought back against his will to live in the pure hell of his horrible gift.

This was a really fun project to work on and follow. Good luck everybody!

The final sculpt with a basic polypaint. I imported the sculpt into Marmoset Toolbag to do the final lighting and render. I will be lighting him with a fairly simple and moody light setup. The main light will be a harsh spot light to cast stark shadows with some much subtler lights to bring the eyes out from complete shadow and to catch the rim in a few places.

Tedious (adj): too long, slow, or dull; tiresome or monotonous. Ex.: "Sculpting gorilla fur is tedious."

Sculpting the gorilla fur was a laborious but fairly simple process. This is just the initial blocking pass. Next, I will be refining the tufts and adding in a bit more hair detail.

Now that the deadline is fast approaching, it's time to break the symmetry with a dynamic pose and get some good texture into this guy.

Things to come: A new crotch situation (I don't like his current codpiece), base, textures, lighting, renders.

Detailing out the ostrich feet. For the large scales, I sculpted in the parts on the top of the toes. I then used the Xtractor brush to copy the scales and use that as an alpha for the larger scales up the leg. After that, I defined them individually with DamStandard. For the smaller scales on the skin, I sculpted a small patch, then used the same Xtractor brush method to cover the rest of the leg.

To get a feel for how my final piece will look, I threw my unposed WIP model into a basic lighting setup. I want to go for some very simple moody lighting.

To tell more of his story, I have added an IV stand that he will be dragging behind him. He's broken his chains and escaped.

I have also given some more subtlety to his anatomy and fleshed out his ostrich feet.

For his face, I wanted to incorporate aspects from the classic Frankenstein movies. I gave him a very heavy brow, with the cut off portion of his skull forming the flat top of the classic monster. I want his expression to read as sad, hopeless, and mostly lifeless, but with very lively eyes. The eyes are the portal to the soul, and despite his decrepit exterior, his eyes need to be vibrant.

His simian arm was too proportionally similar to his human arm, so that needed to be fixed. I mirrored his human arm, since it already had the anatomy placed, and adjusted the proportions to fit with a gorilla. I duplicated the gorilla geometry, dynameshed it, and then sculpted the fur texture and erased the hand geometry.

On a separate layer, I changed the pose and size of his human arm to make it look more shriveled and contorted. I will be pushing the arm pose further.

I gave him some very basic, temporary hair and what is supposed to be a welded metal harness, but I didn't really like this idea once I created it. I will be exploring different options.

At this point, I focused on getting the proper anatomy sculpted in. Here, he is absolutely ripped, but this will be knocked back later. He didn't have quite enough animal for my liking, so I landed on splicing his legs with ostrich legs. They will be fused to his Tibia with the lower leg muscles stretched around to work with his human locomotion.

Using what I have so far, I experimented with some poses. I want him to be slow and lumbering. He is a highly imperfect creation. His heavy simian arm will be hanging low and his only human arm has atrophied into near uselessness.

Frankie is going to have one human arm and one simian arm. At this stage, I used Zspheres to block in the larger arm. He will have an exposed brain due to the intense neurosurgery. Because of this, he will need his head stabilized, hence the rebar brace that I have roughed out onto his shoulder.

To start the initial rough blocking, I used the zbrush mannequin to get a quick default pose. At this stage, I have a very general idea of the pose he will be in, so I positioned his arms relaxed but still hanging and his back with a severe arch. I placed a plane under his feet so I can make sure his stance seems grounded.

Frankenstein's Monster is a medical abomination. He should not exist, yet he does. Bringing a corpse back from the dead comes with profound effects to the physical and psychological ability of the vessel. None of them good. Only a madman would think to splice another species in with that corpse, yet here we are. Through Frankenstein's maniacal genius, he has done it. But it is nowhere near perfect. Far from it, in fact. He sought to combine the raw strength of a gorilla, with the sheer speed of an ostrich, and the brilliance of man. What he got was a lumbering husk of what was once a human. The physical weight of a gorilla's arm dragging him down. The spliced legs of an ostrich driving daggers into his legs with every step. The remaining pieces of himself shriveling to near uselessness. There is nothing left of his mind except the deep, primal understanding that he should not be. He has been brought back against his will to live in the pure hell of his horrible gift.