Creature Design - Gravestone Beast and Daren Horley

Creature Design #9

Overview
Developed from a small silhouette I particularly liked, turned into a living/animated statue creature, carved by villagers as a protector that awoke in nightmares and turned on its creators.

I read an article featuring concept art, and the process thereof, of one of the creatures from 47 Ronin. Daren Horley was the artist responsible and his process was explained in the article, so I thought I'd try it. It involved silhouettes, and then greyscale mockups of a final design, with an hour or two spent on each one, before the final thing. Something I didn't try was using a parchment/paper texture to sketch on, to make it more interesting than a blank colour.

Research

• Daren Horley's article on Creativebloq
• Nightmare Frontier area on Bloodborne, for tombstone texture references
• Rock textures (for an overlay layer)

Process

Digital silhouettes based on the idea caused by the top one (from my sketchbook). Looking for a shape for a statue/gravestone nightmare monster.

I took my favourite five silhouettes to the next stage, drawing details in grey over the top. The top two on the left have no overlay texture. By the third, I realised I was spending too much time on gaining an effective rock texture, so I overlaid a texture from google images on low opacity to add necessary variation much quicker. The two rightmost images were put together from amalgamating the best of the previous five designs.

The final image. A walking statue, carved like the gravestones, made as a protector. It bleeds gore from broken stones. Its limbs are covered in moss, mud, and blood.

Reflection

• My favourite outcome of all of the recent creature designs
• Using a photo texture in a sketch stage meant there was very little left by the end piece - normally I dislike using photo textures but this one was exceptionally useful and I may do it again in a similar case
• Horley's method needs testing again with something less greyscale in the end result
• Spending a few hours on each potential creature meant they were more developed than normal - it took time, but every detail added on them aided the final design
• Small digital silhouette, scaled up, are easier to make than large ones straight off
• Very good method for fleshing designs out first, instead of developing details later on