Artist Benchmark/Reference
For my benchmark and artist references, I decided to look into a game with interesting creature designs; specially with Baldur’s Gate 3.
Maxime Ponslet (2024) Yurgir Concept – Baldur’s Gate 3 [Digital art]. Available at: ArtStation – Yurgir Concept – Baldur’s Gate 3, Maxime Ponslet (Accessed: 23/02/2025).
For the Yurgir concept art, I enjoy the use of anatomy in creating this very rectangular, very self-contained and sturdy shape in character to emphasise the character’s strength, with use of spikes in the horns, arm plate, etc to also push the dangerousness of this character. I’m interested in how the artwork has more detail on focal points of the character, while less detailed/textured on other aspects (comparing his chest to his legs, or the gold chains on his cape for example); a technique I see common on some character concepts which I’d like to try to successfully apply in my own refined art. What interests me the most in this art is the texturing of the skin with the bumps and small spikes, which I’d want to apply to my refined artwork as well whether through use of specific brushes or photo bashing.
Tan Bur-Ci (2024) Meazel [Digital art]. Available at: ArtStation – Meazel, Tan Burci (Accessed: 23/02/2025).
Tan Bur-Ci (2024) Shadow Mastiff [Digital art]. Available at: ArtStation – Shadow Mastiff, Tan Burci (Accessed: 23/02/2025).
Tan Bur-Ci (2024) Meenlock [Digital art]. Available at: ArtStation – Meenlock, Tan Burci (Accessed: 23/02/2025).
One of the elements I enjoy a lot from Tan Bur-Ci’s works is the strong use of posing, particularly in the meenlock 3D sketch giving both this look of a predator getting ready to pounce but also freaky bug-like look to the creature which strengthens the creepiness and inhumanness of the creature. I’m interested in strong use of wrinkles and prominent muscles, showing strong knowledge of anatomy, in the 3D works, something I’d like to possibly include in my 3D work for my creature. For some of the 2D works of Tan Bur-Ci, I can notice use of photo bashing for the textures of the characters; a technique I’d like to try to apply for my refined artwork.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/m8VW39
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zOqL6L
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lR8J4z
https://www.artstation.com/evmanubay
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5mZXP
that guy from bg3 act 2 https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QXJW1E
Development
As a group, we started off with brainstorming for deciding on which emotion, creature type and motivation factor we would do.
We discussed the various different ideas related to different combinations we made, but in the end I went with protected, beast/animal and parasite for mine; my groupmates choosing their own combinations. After which, we decided to think into our narrative and overall concept.
We made a group mood board on Miros to establish a theme and look into various inspiration for designs. Particular things we looked into being the medieval times, beasts and Gods, from various sources like Bloodborne, Zoochosis, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Honkai Star Rail and medieval artwork.
I began trying to visualise my ideas early on however it was rather unsuccessful as I lacked inspiration at the time and took to creating a mood board of different creatures that I thought I could possibly take inspiration from for a horror creature design.
Lazarus’ design from Doctor Who was also a good souce of inspiration, the long tail and freakish proportions sticking out in particular for me.
For my mood board, I started off looking into insects as recommended by a groupmate, deciding to look into moths at first but moving onto also flee and catepillars, particulary the Hickory Horned Devil caterpillar catching my eye; but I also decided to expand my range and look into more various creatures that I thought could work for a horror design. For that, I looked into deep sea creatures and bats since there were plenty of species to be found that had eerie and creepy appearances.
In our class about shape design, I created some concept sketches trying to apply specific animal inspirations for some of them as I was still struggling with design ideas. The overall exercise proved to be useful, as I later went on to try and think hard into applying shape design into my concept, with my mood board inspirations in mind.
I created a series of concept sketches using my mood board as main inspiration, with various of the designs taking heavy inspirations from specific animals. 1 was inspired by moths, amphipods and scorpions, 2 was inspired by crabs, along with some design inspiration from the shape exercise with the crown-like head structure, 3 was mostly inspired by moths but I wanted to go with a different overall shape, and so on. In the end, I went with 12 since it appealed to me most as a beastly design, but with protected as my chosen emotion I thought the strong, large creature could work well.
The design itself was heavily inspired by the Hinox enemy from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom.
Additionally, the design was also based on the Hickory Horned Devil Caterpillar, with the horns in particular.
I created another mood board honing in on animal inspirations for design 12, expanding onto more creatures like the centipede.
I began to expand my ideas for the chosen sketch. I started off on 1 with going for a more realistic version of it, while basing the spike positioning on the Hickory Horned Devil Caterpillar; however, the design in the end feels very basic and not all that fitting for the beastly creature type.
For 2, I tried exaggerating the fat folds of 1 and seeing how it looked with more curved horns, but the overdone fat folds made the shape look too round and unthreatening, along with the horns seeming to work better in 1 (making it look less bug-like and a bit overcomplicated).
For 3, I started adding more centipede-like features with the entire lower body to really emphasise the beastly theme for the character and add more to it beyond just a guy with spikes. For the spikes I went with it looking more erratic and rough, however I also found myself disliking this as it derailed from both the Hickory Horned Devil Caterpillar and overall insectoid inspiration too much for my liking. 3 was also designed with the idea of it being hairy on the top-half, however this too I found myself not liking since I thought it’d contrast awkwardly against the entirely centipede-like lower-half of the body.
After 3, I received feedback from the teacher about giving a more smooth transition into the more human upper-half of the body so I tried implimenting that in 4 through arm plates and the centipede stomach continuing up further into the human torso. In the end, I went with the more organised spikes like that of 1, which resulted in the design having a centipede-like lower-half and caterpillar-like upper-half. In the end, I think going for a more organised and simplified design for the horns worked in my favour as the design was already rather complicated and I hadn’t used Zbrush before.
I was inspired by the design of the Twin Chefs from Little Nightmares (specifcally the fat folds on the face) when designing the fatty neck of my character. The fatty neck was also to resemble the original inspiration of a caterpillar.
Museum Trip
We went on a museum trip to the Royal College of Surgeons of England. I tried taking as many photos as I could (unfortunately could not fit them all here) and did some quick studies on a variety of the displays.
Development cont.
Based on design 4 from the prior sketches, I created a 3-side sheet for my character design. The face I purposefully left blank since I planned to use a reference for sculpting the face.
Based on the side view of the 3-side drawings, I also created this concept design using a lot of photobashing, which helped in visualising my idea better for the Zbrush sculpt.
Sculpting
For starting the sculpt, I decided to use a low poly base I found online (https://skfb.ly/6RJGv) and edited it quickly on Maya to only have the upper body.
Since I didn’t have Zbrush at home (and wouldn’t have been able to get it at home for most of the brief time), I started off trying to scupt in Blender however it ended up unsuccessful so I decided to scrap it entirely in favour of just starting in Zbrush.
Importing the low poly upper body onto Zbrush, I began to sculpt out the blockout. With the help of teacher feedback, I started making the centipede segments using the extract tool.
A strong critique from the teacher I received was regarding the anatomy of my character, I especially struggled throughout the blockout stage with the arms.
With the help of a class lecture regarding anatomy, I found myself trying to fix this issue through different means. Zygote (https://www.zygotebody.com) proved to be useful in trying to identify and apply the muscles on my character.
Alongside that, I used Line of Action (https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/app#/figure-drawing) to find images relating to arm/chest anatomy to do quick sculpting exercises with to try and better my understanding of the muscles and how to sculpt them.
I also looked and created a mood board of real-life posed references of muscled arms to help with my process of sculpting my character’s arms.
I also wanted to look a bit into how artist’s drew these muscles and ended up finding a useful anatomy sculpt guide by Vlad Minguillo (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5mZXP).
Whilst trying to fix the anatomy, I scrapped the original centipede subtools and redid them entirely for a more rounded and larger look.
While scultping, the hands had blended together beyond saving. To solve this issue, I found a tutorial online on creating a hand from scratch using Zspheres.
After using Zspheres for the hands, I decided to also do the same for all the various spikes.
For the leg though, I decided to model a very basic blockout on Maya before importing and sculpting it over on Zbrush.
I positioned the horns in accordance (for the most part) with the 3-side view and began detailing on my sculpt.
For the face, I used Nick Frost from Shawn of the Dead as my main reference. In the end, it’s not exact but I wasn’t too concerned with trying to actually replicate the face, and moreso just needed a face with fat to base upon.
With the legs I tried implementing and sizing them similar to my 3-side view drawings, however mid-sculpt I realised that it looked both awkward and boring. The legs didn’t look like they could hold the weight of the creature and made for an uninteresting silhouette overall. I decided to make the choice of significantly enlarging the legs, and adding them to all the body segments. Even if it did make for a lot more work later down the line, adding legs to each segment worked well in creating a more horrifying creature and pushing the centipede-like nature of it.
For the shells lining the arms and hands, I wanted something that vaguely represented a knight’s gauntlet. It also emphasised the insect beast nature of it, along with pushing the protected emotion more.
For the overall sculpt, I was doing it in symmetry while doing my basic/medium details and using the mirror tool for the legs and horns.
I decided to go full-out on the disgusting look of the creature and tried creating this look of stretched skin around the base of the horns.
I received feedback from the teacher regarding giving my character a weapon, and after some discussion with my groupmate I decided to go with a wooden mace. I searched on Sketchfab for various different maces before choosing the one I thought to be most appropriate for a character based roughly in the Middle Ages.
When applying the mace, I had to rotate the fingers around the handle. This did result in a mildly awkward result with the fingers not looking quite right, but I decided I’d fix it later after posing.
Posing
I began with posing but came to an immediate issue where the arms would get warped really badly. After some online research, I realised this was due to the model being high poly and I’d have to create a low poly version if I wanted the pose to not completely destroy all my details.
I found this useful tutorial on YouTube and used the method of projecting the high poly model onto a low poly model. I only applied this to the torso, however in retrospect I think I should of also done the same for the centipede lower body.
began posing. ended up regretting not posing legs since i had to redo it all later.
i chose the colour because
teacher feedback and groupmate/peer feedbacjk
Polypainting
Rendering
I decided to do tons of different renders and decide on how/whether I’ll use them later on. I used a green background for most of them so it was easier to remove the background on Krita.
Did roughly 50 renders
Final