sketchbook development. concept of the creature.

it came to the time to create my creature, this is the main focus of my pitch, im wanting this comic to be scary by its images i want people to look at them and go ewwwww thats not nice! and to do that i need to sell this creature well. i have to nail it. but it still has to have that comic value because the audience who  i aim this at are comic book fans and the fans like the comic style....so yeah iv given my self a pretty easy task here :/

the best way i could start this was by researching creatures on screen, see what parts of the films make you creep out and how it creeps you out. i need to take note of the imagery not the sounds. 

this also gives me a good opportunity to see how the directors have set the shot, ill be using the frames in my comic book just like the directer uses his shots. directing the elements around the page till i get that scary atmosphere 

 

for me the creepiest films has to be the 80s when effects was all practical, when you can see it in front of you slid that makes you think shit its actuiy there, in front of them. so its the 80s that i studied, my all time fav was the alien saga so i started with that watching them back to back 

(its been an hard easter holidays) i remembered when i was a kid my dad was watching a film and i walked in on it and it scared me for nights on end, i found out that film was the thing (1988s).

i did some research on games that are scary and creepy also. at the time i felt that it would be good, good to see how other on screen things use imagery to scary the audience.

   

a lot of the scare came from the music and being chaised but when played with no sound, its the amount of what you cant see that scares you, a lot of darkness used, and again like in the 80s movies, its the little bits of the creatures that you see that scary you, like the quick flash of a tail, or the blur of something running across the corridor. 

some screen shots that i took from the films and games  that will help me reference creating the character. 

below are some examples of concept art that i found that will influence the body of my creature. 

sketch book development 

combining the research i had made and  the ideas in my head i was ready to hit the sketch books hard. this is my favourite part of all the developments, here i can make mistakes and watch my ideas in my head pore into the pages of my sketch book for others to see. its here were i will realise that i cant actuily draw the idea in my head right away and i have to challange my slef and make hours of drawing time until i see that idea come to life on the page.

below - at this  point my sketches was heavily influenced by the film the thing. it was here were i decided that i need to take a step back and i'm more at a monster not something that looks like an organism, after all the story is about a woman who comes back from the dead to get revenge. she's not an organism.

below - taking it a step back from the pages above. i focused on more of a dead looking monster. it was here i realised i like the ripped open huge mouth and will push it forward. 

below - experimenting with the mouth. notes, needs to have elements of a transformation. the creature has to have a humanoid feature as it has come from a human.

my sketches had finaly left me with this out come, i love it. i can see it in my head on screen looking real, in a game being scary, screaming as it chaises you and looking creepy on the pages of a comic book. 

looking back at my notes in my sketch book i came across the note say the creature bursts out of the humans body. i had these three ideas in mind. all three just as scary and as messed up as each other. 

Out comes

i rendered all of the three thumbnails. i thought if i saw all three in finished form i would see and witness witch had a more scary/creepy impact.

above - this idea changed a lot during the rendering of the thumbnails. i noticed the  way that i had drawn the thumbnail would have made the creature unbalanced and not believable. so i made it sprout legs and have the human just hanging in the structure of the creature. 

                             

above - this also changed a lot from the thumbnail. because the creature is using his upper body to move and his able to move real fast its only fact that he would have a better upper body. so with my knowledge on the gym i used it to target the muscles that would be used more to do this and made them bigger and stronger. forearms, triceps, upper back.                                         

now that i have all three in front of me and can see what they actually look like in comic form. i have chosen the first one to be my creature. my reseans are because it looks creepy with skinny long limbs the gore of the guts exiting the human gives it the look that its intentions are to kill people and that human raped around his waits makes him look like his has more limbs like a spider!!! and everyone is scared of spider!



all these refined creatures posses a human figure on there body. this got me thinking about the story of the comic.the creature is coming for them for revenge. there needs to be an element of transformation for the creature and the human

( stay with me )

so why not have the above as a finally monster? why dosnt the human come back from the dead 80% human and 20 a monster. and later monster burst out of the human like some moth.
supper creepy all the way through and when you though it couldn't get any more discussing and scary BOOM. you just shit ya sen

so i hit the sketch books one more time. i all ready had an i dead of what she would look like, i wanted her nore human than creature. her face would take more the form of the creatures. the torn mouth and sagged sad eye. claws on her finger tips. i have this idea in my head of her stood in the dark, face covered in shadow and body lit by moon light. and next frame the face slightly reveals teeth and moon light eyes.

sketch book work.

below - it didnt take me long to get to what i wanted. it was pretty easy realy a woman with slight fetures of what iv just spent days creating. so most of the work was done but the hardest thing was drawing a woman's head shot. i wanted to make sure she was easily racognised as a women even with a messed up face.


i printed out a a template of a female comic style head and used that to hep me get the fetures in the right place.





like i said before it came quick but what i have on the right hand side is exact to  what i had in mind i couldnt be more happy with it. all i have to do is scale it up and render.

at the table i like to keep everything around me, everything from the original sketches from my sketches to the rough for the larger scale and original creature drawings to keep me reminded of what im aiming for.

in my practice i like to use ink flicks. to blend, to texture or to give depth but maily texture, but here i wanted it to be used for shading. to help me control that i used a thin piece of paper and cut out were i want the ink flicks. like so. this is always my last thing to do. 

removed and i have my out come.

 
(having trouble with blogger and posting images)

none of my finals have gone through photo shop just yet but i plan to take it through the levels of photo shop and im questioning colour at this point

below is the finished coloured creature, and i love it! i think i like it more becuase this is my first concept of a character that has gone through this long development. i love the other creatures also but this one i can imagine in its context. the feed back iv recived from group crits and peers have all been positive, the ony negetive reactions iv had is that they dont like it cos its creepy and her mouth scares them but thats what i was asking for! also happy with the colour on this. this is my first successful  finished digital coloured piece. it took all my corners of my photoshop skills to create this. i still would have liked to create this using water colour but digital is the comic book publishings proffered media so its was good that i tested my self.