Initial Enemy Idea
Going into designing the enemy I had little clue on where I wanted the design to go with the only time I've gone into it being one panel in a story board I completed earlier in the term. This panel image can be seen below. Overall I wanted to capture the mentality A.I. system present in the game through the enemies design. So I want this creature to have a truly unsettling appearance that will fit into the stories' setting, This lead me to think of the well known in swiss artist H.R Giger responsible for the iconic alien in Ridley Scott's 'Alien'.
H.R. Giger
I've know of this artist for a while as I'm a fan of his artist direction in a lot of projects he's worked on in TV, games and films, as soon as I thought of having an enemy with truly unsettling design I knew I would look to his work for influence. His art uses a mix of organic forms but drawn in a more mechanical design. This leads to his art coming of as truly unsettling and seaming unnatural. I would love to use aspects of his art style in the enemies character design yet only as an inspiration crafting something of my own from his work.
". R. Giger is recognized as one of the world’s foremost artists of Fantastic Realism. Born in 1940 to a chemist’s family in Chur, Switzerland, he moved in 1962 to Zurich, where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts. By 1964 he was producing his first artworks, mostly ink drawings and oil paintings, resulting in his first solo exhibition in 1966, followed by the publication and world-wide distribution of his first poster edition in 1969. Shortly after, he discovered the airbrush and, along with it, his own unique freehand painting style, leading to the creation of many of his most well known works, the surrealistic Biomechanical dreamscapes, which formed the cornerstone of his fame. To date, more than 20 books have been published about Giger’s art."
- https://www.hrgiger.com/
Other Artist Inspiration
My next step is to look into 3D and character artists that have used his work as inspiration and how they have put their own take on the style.
Lorenzo Napoli -
One of the top character artists I found on Artstation when I searched art relating to H.R Giger was Lorenzo Napoli. His work heavily falls into the organic for but using mechanical form and shapes in muscle formations. The overall textures to the characters he's made especially seen on their skin in something I really like the look of yet I feel it is taking heavy reference from animals in real life so when referencing and making the skin in Substance Painter for my enemy I will look at animal's skin in real life such as Komodo Dragons and Black forest frogs who's skin has a similar look to some of the characters Lorenzo Napoli has worked on.
CHRISTIAN URDAPILLETA-
Another artist that follows the same design principles such as H.R. Giger is Christian U, yet he stick closer to the more organic look to Giger's Art. A part of his design to creating characters that I like is how he keeps close to the base of a humans muscle form so its easy to the look at the creatures and immediately understand how their body moves. I would love to get this same amount of understanding to anatomy to this character in my game.
Christopher Franke -
One of the Final CG artist I looked at when thinking of where I wanted to take the enemy design of the game's creature is Christopher F. I'm a fan of the distinct shapes that are present in his work with all his characters having a very distinct form even if you put the silhouettes against each other you couldn't confuse them with each other. As the character I want to create is to be set in a horror game set mostly at night it is crucial that my enemy character has a distinct silhouette so he stands out to the environment.
Mood Boards
Beginning to work on the ideation of the enemy I decided to include pieces done by the artists that I spoke about from before and focus on the areas of their design I like and look for real world representations of them features. One consistent element I liked in the designs present was the dark leathery skin, so I began to look at animals that had this feature and came across two main references. The first being the Black Skinned Tree Frog, yet the skin on the animal seems too clean in most cases and doesn't have the scars and rugged look of the second animal the Komodo Dragon. I also want to capture an ultraviolet mysterious look to the character as I love the idea of it being horrific in an other worldly sense, when referencing this I looked into deep sea creatures that use ultra violet light to see in the depths of the ocean.
Initial Design
From this I made quick sketch altering physical features till I came to a design I was happy with that I would progress further in a 3D sculpt. I went for a most organic look with an image of a Komodo dragon's skin used for the skin. I wanted to add the feature of a skull for the face to show that these are modified humans and could possibly foreshadow what could happen if the creature captures the characters in the game. Further links to show this being a modified human can be seen in the machinery that is seen in the waist of the character.
I want the character to look like he is strong and able to take on a normal human in combat yet the effects of what has happened to the human that was turned into this creature present, with the body looking destroyed and stripped of unimportant body parts for the creature.
Sculpting
Using the image as seen from above I began to sculpt the basic shape I depicted and begin to adjust areas to be more visually pleasing. Using the base of human anatomy such as the muscle and bone structures as the basis and deforming the figure to fit the shape of the creature.
Once all of the base shapes where down I added a basic pass of detail to show the shape of the face and the basic layout of the muscle
Finalised Enemy Design
Taking The Design Further
Retopology For Animation
Texturing
