week 1
For my creature, I experimented with a bunch of random doodles. While looking at other animals I kinda wanted to make something that could go on both land and water. I like the duck mixed with an otter and the frog with more dog anatomy the most out of my designs.
My feedback for the shark is to not draw my creatures so cartoony and keep muscles in mind.
Pinterest References
Videos I’ve watched.
Don’t add stuff onto the creatures that don’t make sense (hair onto a reptile)
week 2
Originally, I thought the creature had to be a realistic animal but I just found out it could be based off of Mythology, fictional monsters changed slightly or animal skeletons interpreted differently. Because of this, I want to experiment a bit more with what my creature could be.
Drawings of what animals could look like just based on their skeletons.
I’ve decided that I still want to make a creature that goes onto both land and the water. I was recommended to look up The creature of the black lagoon.
I like how goofy it looks but how it’s still seen as a threat. I was advised to give my creature a vibe like cute or scary etc. I really enjoy drawing goofy creepy stuff in my free time so I want to give my creature these characteristics. My choices for now that I want to experiment with is:
-Creepy but harmless
-Cute but is very dangerous/ has messed up implications
-Goofy but lethal
I decided to look up some designs for messed up looking mermaids and found this artist-
https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-beautiful-mermaids-jana-heidersdorf/?utm_source=com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic
All of their mermaid designs are very unique from each other and the artist gives explanations for design choices that make sense to the mermaids environment. I don’t really want to go for a mermaid but these designs are very inspiring with elements that I want to add to my own creature.
Sketches
Using both the artist and a Pinterest board, I made a few character sketches. I want my character to look more creature like than human, with the most human one has a fake woman that it holds up almost like a horn.
Pinterest board
week 3
While looking at reference designs for my character, I’ve realised that a lot of them were sea creatures trying to disguise themselves as humans. Instead I want to try and design a creature that disguises itself as a fish.
I liked this design at first but then I realised that I would’ve mostly just been sculpting a big fish and that the design of the actual creature itself looks a little boring. Posing it with the fish wrapped around its body also seemed a little complicated.
Instead, I want to go with a similar design like this where I use the body of the first creature and then the head of the second creature. By making the head more fish like and having a tail on its head, I believe that since it’ll be walking at the bottom of the water, but somewhat close to the shore, other creatures will be looking down at it so it will look like a fish to everything else.
I have a better idea of how I want my character to look now and it’s story.
My creature disguises itself as a big fish so that it can lure in fishermen and eat them. Because fishermen may not be out during the winter, I gave my creature either an expandable stomach or a poach on it stomach so that it’s able to hold huge amounts of food that can do it for weeks. It’s huge humanoid body usually scares off predators, but some may also mistake it as a fish to which it’s able to defend itself with its huge claws. It can also eat fish if its desperate enough but it doesn’t really enjoy the taste of them, like how wolves can eat berries but they prefer meat.
Blockout
This is my simple block out for now but I will be adding more shapes to it while I’m sculpting it.
week 4
After the class activity where we sculpted the horse but used muscle references, I’m going to do the same with my character to make it more realistic.
I decided to use human muscles as the fish creature looks very humanoid and is able to walk on its hind legs so I believe the anatomy should be accurate.
When using these references while working on my model, I didn’t really like how thin the arms looked. While I was looking at references for bigger arms, I found a condition called Lipoedema where fat cells build up unnaturally within a persons arms and legs. I’m going to be using this condition as a reference as I think making the fat in my creature look unnatural.
Because my creature is fat and I’m using fat references, the muscle reference doesn’t work anymore but I am looking at how the fat sits on humans with the folds and direction some of the skin is in. Since my character carries entire human bodies in its stomach, it makes sense for it to be fat.
Reference for the fish mouth.
I moved the head more forward because I realised that its jaw was sitting on its neck. I may need to make the mouth slightly smaller after looking at a reference of a fish, but still be big enough so it can swallow fishermen. I was struggling to figure out how to naturally blend the head with the body as the body usually follows a natural s shape with the head but the head follows an s shape with the tail so it looks a bit disconnected with the rest of the body. I looked up some references. I’m debating either redoing the design a little by putting the tail of the fish where it’s supposed to be or by maybe by adding a more prominent neck.
It does fix the problem that I had but it just looks a little generic as all the fish designs I’ve seen have looked like this. I want mine to look more unique so I may try adding more to its neck.
I decided to stick with tail on its head and by simply moving the characters head forward and making it’s mouth smaller, I fixed the problem.
I want the feet to be webbed as well so I’ll be using this reference.
week 5
In class, we learned how to make our own brushes. I want to make one to give my creature fish scales. I made this one in krita.
I believe the ovals look better and I’ll be using these after I retopologies my character.
I tried to make a brush to add texture to the creature’s fins but it didn’t turn out well at all so I’ll have to texture it manually.
The thing annoying me the most about my character is how smooth its head looks, so I looked up a reference.
This design both has patterns on the sides of the characters head which I will use as reference to make my characters head look more interesting. I also like the colours of this fish character, pale blue with purplish red highlights so I’m thinking of making my creature the same colour.
It definitely makes the characters head look more interesting. Thinking about the scales, I don’t just want the scales to be on the head as it’ll make it’s head look too separated from it’s body but I also don’t want its entire to be covered in scale as I believe that it’s get rid of some of the details and be a bit of a mess.
I want to use this as a reference for the scales as its scales are on its back, the back of its arms and the front of its legs while so its stomach is bare but it still looks good.
My character fully retopologised.
I used multiresolution and went onto the model again with the blob tool to make the character look a little lumpy to match my references a bit more.
I then used my own brush to add a bunch of scales and added detail onto some parts of the monster.
Exporting image textures
I want my model to have a AO map as it can add a bunch of dark outlines which can help make my creature look more dark and creepy. It turned out a lot darker than I thought it would but I still want to try it out to see what the outcome will be.
I also made my character shiny to make it look like it’s wet.
For the base, I used creature skin alien smooth as I like the added red purple highlights it added and the texture. I want to add some more of these highlights as I believe they’ll look interesting.
reference
I used this reference for the basic colours on my creature’s head which will be pale blue and purplish red.
This is my finished texture of the fish which I painted over a few times manually with dark purplish red. I like how it adds extra texture to the characters skin. The eyes look pure black at the moment but I’m planning to experiment with either a sphere from blender or maybe a glowing orb from unreal engine. Whichever will look better.
The creature looks a bit too clean as it’s supposed to be swimming in the water and killing fishermen so I think maybe adding mud and blood may make it look like it’s living in the environment more.
I added a bunch of dirt splashes ranging from dark brown to red to look like mud and blood. I also experimented with the weight of the smart masks which gave the creature more of a rough texture.
week 8
Before I pose my creature, I’m going to create the environment so I know what it could be interacting with.
As my character is a fish person that eats fishermen, it’ll have to be in an environment with water and land.
At first I thought maybe a beach but after watching this video, it made me realise how it would be way too simple and a bit boring to look at. And my character would kinda be standing there with nothing to really interact with.
I saw this video for the environment and it’s a lot more interesting to look at with mountains trees and rocks, but the water looks a little shallow for my creature.
I started looking at some other fishing place references but I don’t think my creature would be able to live in a river like environment as it’s supposed to be a bit taller than a human so it would be too big. It’ll have to be in an ocean.
These are the types of environment I want to go with. I’ll have to make the environment look more spooky though as I want the creature to come off as threatening and to give the environment a hopeless and threatening atmosphere. I want to add fog, a more gloomy looking sky and greyish water.
I found this video which explains how to create an environment that looks really close to what I’m going for so it’ll help me create an environment with water and rocks.
This video showed me how to add water and create simple land. I went onto Epic Games Launcher to download a bunch of rock assets for free which I then laid out to look like rocks that are close to an ocean. I also placed a mannequin for a reference to where the creature will be and its height compared to everything around it.
I experimented with the lighting a little because I wasn’t sure if I wanted the lighting to be reddish or grey.
I think that the red is a bit too deep and that the grey is too dark. I’ll make the lighting grey but lighter and have the lighting a bit brighter as I want the character to still be visible. I still want to use red so I’ll make the sky a little red because I like how intimidating it looks.
week 10
For the pose of my character, I want it to be the creature kinda dragging its leg while reaching out to the camera like it’s reaching out to a fisherman on the shore. This makes it look like it’s not used to walking normally as it swims all the time, and also replicates a zombie like pose to add extra horror to it.
I placed my character into my setting near the water to look like it just exited.
I took a few screenshots as I don’t think a single shot is able to show off all of the details such as its fins and tail at the back of its head.
As I’m working with unreal engine on my own computer, it’s not able to handle too much stuff happening on screen, so I couldn’t experiment with glowing eyes in unreal. But I’m thinking of editing over my images to see what glowing eyes could look like.
I put the image through krita and darkened the shadows, made the eyes red and made small red highlights on the hands to signify blood. I’m not too sure about this shot as it looks impersonal and the rocks look a little all over the place at this angle.
I did the same with this second image except I put a red filter over it which makes it look more hellish.
I really like how my model came out but if I were to do it again, I would make the arms rotated so that the hands would be facing down as when I was posing the character, I had to twist the arms a lot more than I would’ve liked. I also wish that my computer was stronger to run unreal engine better and the way I could’ve fixed this would be making my background at school but I left the deadline a little too late to do that. Apart from that, I’m really happy with how spooky and threatening it came out and I came to really liking the monsters design.