For this module, I was tasked with creating a 3D character whilst demonstrating my understanding of 3D character design. I will be including the narrative description of my character, body style and personality, descriptions of colour design, visual style, character concepts and ideas and references to different sources that I have used. I will also refer to the software and tools I will be using and discussing any setbacks that I had whilst creating my character. I will use the following software for the completion of my character/asset: Maya, Zbrush, Adobe Substance Painter and Adobe Substance Stager.
Inspirations and Research
To start off with, I already had a rough idea as to what I wanted to create, with the main inspiration being humanoid looking creatures from the horror genre. The main reason why I decided to make a creepy humanoid character was because of a recent game that I have found called “In Silence”, which has a humanoid like creature called the Rake that only has a single finger and toe on each of its limbs, with it being able to somehow catch up to the player despite its absurd build. This Rake was likely inspired from a known creepypasta called the Rake which is basically a much more humanoid looking creature with a slenderer looking build than a regular human. From there, I decided to research several different humanoid creatures, including the famously known Wendigo, SCP 096 and 049, the Xenomorph, well known creepypastas such as Slenderman and also various creatures like the mimic from the recently popular Vita Carnis. I took elements from all these inspirations to create my character visually as well as the lore of said character.
Concepts
Eventually, I decided to make the primary base of my character a Wendigo, as I liked the idea of it more than the other creatures I mentioned earlier, I took some features from some of my other inspirations such as the Leshen and the rakes and adapted them in a Wendigo format. I experimented with a bunch of different antler shapes and sizes and did a bunch of research on animal claw anatomy (more specifically eagle claw anatomy). From the information I gathered, most animal claws are curved so that was something that I had to bear in mind whilst making an initial concept for my character, especially when designing the foot claws as eagle claws are noticeably more curved than other animal claws. The tail on the character is mainly inspired by different species of monkeys and other similar primates, like the Mexican Spider Monkey, which uses its tail to hang on and grapple on trees.
As seen below, I also decided to explore with different shades of colour such as the mixture of blues, greens, and yellows to create the aquatic variant and autumn colours (red, yellow, orange, and brown) for another variant. Ultimately, I decided to expand on the third variant, which I called the Evergreen variant, which uses a colour palette of mainly greens and browns, just like the colour scheme that’s present in evergreen forests. The evergreen variant of the character design was better due to it having a more darker unsettling colour scheme, which conveys the creepiness of the design more, as characters with darker colour schemes tend to be creepier than characters that are very bright and colourful.
With all the above aspects considered, I decided to make an anatomy sketch of the character on how I wanted it to look like. I drew it in this pose as it seemed more imposing and menacing, almost as if it stared down at the viewer which is what I want to convey, especially with it’s posture and unusually skinny shape to it.
Backstory
The image just below this text contains the backstory that I have created for my character, which includes its name, origin, possible abilities, and basic facts. I wanted to have an element of science fiction to my character by adding how it was created as to show that it was created by humans and not a product of nature, so therefore I decided that my character would fill a role of an invasive species (like in the case of Vita Carnis). Invasive species are defined as species that are not supposed to be in the environment that they reside in, whilst also having a direct effect on the surrounding environment (like seen in the backstory page) (National Geographic, 2022). In the backstory, I also did not mention that the main diet of my character is humans, but it can eat any living matter as it’s got an advanced immune system to tackle any foreign substances. Green can have a positive meaning, as it is normally associated with nature and growth, but it can also convey the message of a lack of experience and also feelings of envy and jealousy, hence the reason why I chose said colour for my character (Chapman, 2010). This links to the story of my character in a sense that it despised its creators and wanted to escape it’s confinement, along with the creature’s age due to the moss growths that have spread across its body.
