Archive for 28/09/2009

Corvid Cosmonauts:

/ 28/09/2009 / No comments

Zear Zip & Zear TarkZear Zip (Left) & Zear Tark (Right)

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! I wanted their names to sound as if pronounced by the birds themselves, similar to how birds like the Chiffchaff or Cuckoo have Onomatopoeic names derived from the sounds they commonly make.

Tearah TorahZear Tark Roost on Tearah Torah

After drawing the Zears I started to think about how they may live and what their homeworld might look like. Focusing on the Zear Tark my concept 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 Martins nest cup. This giant mud structure would then be used as a towering vertical city, which would dominate the surrounding savannah landscape. In contrast I would like to imagine that the Zear Zip would instead stick more to the forests and mountains, living in smaller tribal roost’s.

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Category: Creature Design, Fiddzy's Artwork, Landscape & Set Design / Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Bugbird & Psychohare:

/ 22/09/2009 / No comments

The two images below continued the new artistic style I have been playing with in recent designs, using a mixture of bold sharpening lines combined with realistic shading and detail. Here I also aimed to explore the importance of characterisation in my designs, and try explain my reasoning behind such choices.

MikoogruppMikoogrupp

The Mikoogrupp or “Bugbird”, was a fairly straight forward design, with the only real changes between its final form and its original designs being a removal of a second pair of smaller praying mantis style scythe arms, that I felt over complicated the design. I wanted the Mikoogrupp species to resemble a mangy humanoid alien fly, but characterise it with an unexpected cultured and sophisticated appearance, with subtle hints to a darker side and history in the form of its blood stained bone necklace.

Ruur - Jester AssassinRuur – Jester Assassin

While the physical appearance of the Ruur as horned lagomorph humanoids went reasonably unchanged throughout the design process, the species actual characterised appearance went through several design phases. From the start I had intended for the Ruur to be a former slave race with initial depictions resembling ancient Egyptian pyramid workers. Unhappy with this design it then shifted to become more of a oriental, armour clad bounty hunter, ignoring my original concept, before eventually shifting yet again to become this more whimsical grenade juggling jester. An oddball yet deadly assassin aimed at taking down his former masters, in the most explosive way possible.

Additionally both races where once slaves to the Valleeshan, but for two very different reasons, with the similarly insectoid Mikoogrupp employed as soldiers and canon fodder, while the Ruur where imprisoned as labours and miners.

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Category: Character Design, Costume Design, Creature Design, Fiddzy's Artwork / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Invasion of the Space Koalas:

/ 15/09/2009 / No comments

Po Po NuffPo Po Nuff

The rather bizarre Po Po Nuff was a somewhat random creation made from my desire to create something cute yet creepy that you could easily imagine as a strange yet plausible alien pet. Its hybrid appearance draws inspiration from a variety of real world animals including koala’s, bushbabies and even a species of small single clawed dinosaur called a Shuvuuia.

I am personally not 100% happy with its final design, although would enjoy coming back to the design at a later date, tweaking its rather awkward looking anatomy and playing around with the possibility of introducing a variety of different domestic breeds. Another design feature I would like to incorporate is the inclusion of a thin and sticky frog-like tongue, used in the wild to catch its insectoid prey.

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Category: Creature Design, Fiddzy's Artwork / Tags: , , , , ,

The Poala of Prema Zan:

/ 14/09/2009 / No comments

Poala SentinelA Poala sentinel riding its Quadclaw Walker

Designed to be a truly alien race the Poala are a species of sentient telepathic crystalline lifeforms. Able to create microscopic nano bots fully under their control. The Poala use this natural asset to build their technology and expand their telepathic powers for which they use to communicate, with both organics and machines. Naturally slow moving at inches a day, they further use their mental powers to control their technology in combination with their nano’s, utilising special robotic walkers known as Quadclaw Walkers to traverse vast distances at speeds considered the norm by most other species. While they have complete mastery over computers an extremely rare few can use their powers on organics, luckily the most an average Poala can accomplish is to read peoples minds, but only with considerable concentration.

Prema ZanThe Poala on Prema Zan

In addition to designing the Poala I also wanted to design their homeworld, Prema Zan, a rocky world exposed to the vacuum of space, portraying another trait the Poala possess. 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 our solar systems asteroid belt. Stylistically I took a slightly more cartoony approach with these artworks.

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Category: Creature Design, Fiddzy's Artwork, Landscape & Set Design, Prop & Technology Design / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Parrot Beak & Dragon Ferret:

/ 04/09/2009 / No comments

Originally designed completely separate from one another, the more I worked on them the more I wanted to see the two together. Eventually merging their backstories not just as two separate species but also the individual characters themselves.

"P" the PsittacoduPentorrinexu “P” Vandango the Psittacodu

Able to move as both a quadruped when walking and a biped when running, the dinosaur like Psittacodu stand just above the hips on a standard human. They are logical and bold in numbers, but not necessarily adventurous and often timid if alone. They are long lived with close but small families, with children often born one at a time. The females sported pink plumage and lacked the horns and tail spikes. The Psittacodu where already an advanced and accomplished race long before first contact with the Jeepeg, with a large space navy, consisting of slow and defensive carriers and destroyers.

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

Flex the Jeepeg Flex Brotchsteen the Jeepeg

While the Jeepeg may only stand at just over a foot tall, what they lack in appearance they made up for in character. Born in big litters of up to 6 or more the Jeepeg had large but not very close families, with a typical Jeepeg being self driven, adventures, energetic, self and often overly confident. The males wattles and head spikes varied among individuals, and are completely absent in the females, bar two much shorter and rounded head spikes. The Jeepeg space navy is famed for its fast and manoeuvrable corvettes and fighter interceptors.

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.

Its these differences that have formed the long withstanding alliance between the two races, particularly in their combined military from which their political alliance was first formed. An example of this collaboration is the “ship for hire” (known galactically as shippers) duo Pentorrinexu “P” Vandango and Flex Brotchsteen. True to their species stereotypes “P” is the brains and logic, while Flex is the mouth and motivator, whether it be for a simple ferry service or a dangerous smuggling job.

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Category: Character Design, Costume Design, Creature Design, Fiddzy's Artwork / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,