FiddzyDesign – Concept Artwork

These two creature designs were created as an extension to alien shark designs done previously, only this time I had gained my initial inspiration from the utterly bizarre looking Australian deep-sea fish, the Blobfish, particularly the Blob Sculpin species. Although unlike the shark designs which focused primarily on linework, these alien influenced blobfish where drawn specifically looking at developing my colour application, using a more defined brush to help show greater contrast and form.

The Blobmander

The colour application on the Blobmander is similar to how I normally work, however here I have tried to use less blurring to gain sharper lines  on my colours creating greater contrast, especially in the highlights. The creature itself is a cross between the blob sculpin and a Chinese giant Salamander.

Cave of the Opinnanite

This piece showing the primitive cave dwelling Opinnanite was done as a purely digital creation, unlike the Blobmander above. This allowed me to concentrate on building form with colour rather than with linework. Overall while not perfect I felt it was a good step forward in the right direction, with this design also allowing to be play with depth of field, here using a series of 2D layers in a similar fashion as to how I use to build depth in Flash animation. While not designed to be an aquatic species the facial structure of the Opinnanite was based on the illusive blobfish.

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Continuing my project on studying both human and animal anatomies, I have started to look at the apex predators of the sea, sharks. However rather than just create some direct anatomy studies, I decided to mix both study and imagination together and come up with some rough sketches for some alien shark designs, particularly focusing on the Hammerhead shark, which is undoubtedly one of the best looking sharks, atleast in my mind.

Double HammerheadArbiter Shark

Semi-Fun Fact: The design of the Arbiter Shark was inspired by a combination of the facial structure of the Elites from the Halo franchise and the jawbone of a sheep.

Lime Shark

Semi-Fun Fact: The Lime Shark, was not named because of its bright green eyes, but rather because its serpentine appearance was based on the body of a moray eel, with “Lime” being a call-back to the sketch of a moray eel I had drawn previously.

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Between the festive cheer for Christmas and the build up towards the new decade I have being playing around with a rough holiday sketch of a demonic snowman character, known as the Snowdemon.

The Snowdemon

The initial idea behind the Snowdemon was the pure and simple concept of “an evil snowman”, which is exactly what it is, a animated snowman embodied by the a psychopathic winter spirit, able to walk the earth again for however long the winter chill may last.

…and on that cheery note I wish you all a Happy New Year!

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Recently I have decided it would be very beneficial to take a short break from producing new character and creature designs and instead take some time to reinforce and strengthen my drawing skills by going back to basics and working over the winter on some anatomy studies. Something I have not done properly for awhile now, and would greatly benefit my future work. The Images below are some of the rough sketches I have been doing, focusing particularly on skeletal structures, particularly skulls.

Four Digit Alien Hand – Anatomy StudyHuman Skeletal Studies – Rib Cage & Hand BonesHuman Skeletal Studies – Skull & Leg BoneHuman Skeletal Study – Leg BoneTyrannosaurus Rex – Skull & Anatomy StudiesLime Moray Eel – Facial Anatomy Study

I find that taking doing these kinds of studies to be extremely beneficial, allowing me to flex my drawing muscles and  develop as an artist. Over the next few weeks I shall continue to do more of these studies and begin to incorporate them into new designs.

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The Flesh Teddy

This new demonic creature design was an experimental piece done entirely digitally. Designed to be an animated, stitched together leathery monster, the Flesh Teddy is inhabited by a devious yet playful spirit which roams the world looking to both scare and entertain with its sometimes deadly practical jokes. Here I have shown the demon in its own twisted “Toy Box Dimension”.

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Nuu Nulip – “Jelloroom”

The inspiration for the strange mushroomoid creature above came to me while redesigning the Mulood fungus monster from the post below. However unlike the mobile Mulood, for this creature design I wondered what a static carnivorous mushroom might be like. The outcome was this, the Nuu Nulip, a strange cross between a mushroom, jellyfish and a table lamp, luring in its prey with its bright luminous cap, then snagging them with its stinging jellyfish like tentacles.

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Mulood’s Lair

This is a redesign of one of my favorite past creature designs the fungus monster, Mulood. The original Mulood sketch was drawn well over a year ago back when I was first experimenting with digital artwork, this made it the perfect candidate to be redesigned using some of the new skills and techniques I have learnt since then. I addition to revitalizing a dated design this was also done as an experimental piece playing with new techniques in depth, lighting and atmosphere, as well as being one of my first entirely digital creations.

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Zear Tark Roost on Tearah Torah

The landscape above was inspired by the sentient bird creatures I had recently finished designing, the Zears. After drawing the Zears I started to think about how they might live and what their homeworld might look like. My idea was that they would live in large communal nests, similar to a bee hive or dove cote, built from the ground up with mud and sticks like a house martians nest cup. This giant mud structure would then be used as a towering vertical city, which would dominate the surrounding savanna landscape.

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Zear Zip (Left) & Zear Tark (Right)

Although I will admit that its not one of my best or personal favorite drawings, what I do like about it is its use of colour. The idea behind the piece was to design two different yet closely related sentient species, here shown in the form of the Zear Zip and Zear Tark, two not very sentient looking bird species, hence the necklace.

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The two images below continued the new artistic style I have been playing with in recent designs, using a mixture of bold sharpening lines and realistic shading and detail, creating this almost real world/comic book character blend.

Ruur – Pyromaniac Bounty Hunter

The design behind the Ruur’s character and appearance went through several different phases. Originally appearing with a more goat like facial structure, the Ruur was initialling going to be depicted with Ancient Egyptian stylistic undertones. Then its design shifted to become a more oriental armour clad bounty hunter character before eventually shifting yet again to become this more whimsical grenade juggling jester like character as shown above, gaining a more hare like appearance.

Mikoogrupp

Unlike the Ruur, the Mikoogrupp or “Bugbird”, was a much more straight forward design, with the only real changes between this its final form and its initial design being a removal of a second pair of smaller praying mantis like arms.

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Po Po Nuff – “Koala Crab”

The rather bizarre Po Po Nuff was a somewhat random creation made from my desire to create something cute, yet creepy. Its alien appearance draws its inspiration from many real world animals including koala’s, bushbabies and even species of small single clawed dinosaur called a Shuvuuia.

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I designed the Poala to be a race of telepathic crystalline entities, that can control their technology with their computer like minds. In addition to designing the Poala I also wanted to design their homeworld, Prema Zan. Inspired by the new concept of dwarf planets (Plutoids), I decided to base the design of Prema Zan on the real world dwarf planet Ceres, a dwarf planet found in the solar systems asteroid belt. Stylistically I took a slightly more cartoony approach with these artworks.

Poala on a Quadclaw WalkerPoala on Prema Zan

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Psittacodu

Semi-Fun Fact: The Psittacodu, appearance is based on a genus of parrot beaked Dinosaurs known as Psittacosaurus.

Jeepeg

Semi-Fun Fact: The Jeepeg’s design came from mixing elements from both an eastern world dragon and a ferret. Its name, Jeepeg, is a pun on the file format, JPEG.

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Ozznobat

The idea behind the Ozznobat was to design an alien that relied on its other senses rather than sight. Instead having the Ozznobat “see” the world using advanced senses in touch, taste, hearing and especially smell, as well as having a built in form of natural radar. I wanted this to also be reflected in its culture, with their clothing being designed around empathizing texture rather than appearance, with the shoulders being a critical area. I decided to give it dark red skin like many deep sea creatures, which apparently helps to hide them in the darkness.

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Nimm Dimension Jumper

The Nimm was designed to be a lifeform that can live as both non-corporeal energy and as a corporeal humanoid being, with the additional ability of jumping between dimensions and realities. The artwork above shows the Nimm in a transition state, emerging from its non-corporeal energy state and into its physical planetary form. I actively decided against having its physical form reacting with the light form its non-corporeal form, due to the idea of its two forms existing in two different non-interactive dimensions, our world and the Nimm Dimension.

Klishish

Semi-Fun Fact: Both the Klishish and the Nimm were designed to be very Humanoid with elements of the traditional “big eyed, small gray alien” concept.

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Taking a Kaiju break, I decided to revisit, redraw and revamp an old character design. The outcome is the newly named Black-backed Stilt a dinosaur like creature based on a real world wading bird called a Black-winged stilt, one of my personal favourite animals. This new piece shows an adult female with her child, that still sports its juvenile plumage and colouration.

Black-backed Stilt’s – Mother & Child

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A slightly more experimental piece, this battle scene was originally drawn as a very rough pencil sketch then scanned into Photoshop were it was coloured,  edited and sharpened. This piece features my Mulood “Fungus Creeper”, a creature originally designed as a dungeon dwelling demon, rather than a Kaiju. However I liked the design of the Mulood so much I decided to reuse it again here.

Ba’Bate vs. Mulood

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Continuing my self directed Kaiju project I have designed three further monster characters as shown below. Like the Leeton, these three Kaiju where designed to look both realistic yet silly and to have an appearance of a man in a suit.  I was heavily inspired by the idea of them being reflected as ancient gods.

Kaiju Pharaoh ZorrticKaiju King ToobyKaiju Gulmar

Semi-Fun Fact: The name Gulmar is a cross between Gull and Fulmar two seabirds that reflect its bird like head. The rest of its bulbous body was designed by the concept of it being like a giant monster vacuum cleaner, that can both suck stuff into its body, then fire it back out again.

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These are the first character and landscape pieces from my new self direct Kaiju design project. This portfolio protect resolves around the design of my own Kaiju, a Japanese’s word meaning “strange beast” or “monster”, a word often associated with the Japanese giant monster movie series such as Godzilla, Mothra & Ultraman, the inspiration for this protect. My aim is to create several of these kaiju characters, designed to look realistic yet still very cheap and silly, then to draw them within a variety of different landscapes.  The artwork below shows my first monster design, Leeton, specifically drawn to look like a man in a suit as a tribute to the original Japanese monsters.

Kaiju LeetonLeeton Forest – March of the Leeton

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Jovari Assassin

The Jovari character was designed by the need to break up the masculinity from allot of my past work, with the Jovari a sexy yet lethal female alien being the perfect way to do that. The Idea behind the look of the Jovari was to give it a graceful and very feminine appearance, yet to also give it dark, underground and seedy undertones with its gothic colouration and fashion.

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These two designs came from the urge to look into a more magical and ancient world. They also came from my desire to play with texture and lighting. They were originally intended to go together in a single piece with the Mage summing his creation.

Animated RubbleZel’Nug’Noon Mage

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