Under the Sea

The Reef Character Project was pretty awesome and I took away some pretty useful lessons about referencing designs to preexisting creatures or places. For this character I used these sea dwellers to make mood-board.

I'll point out the jellyfish tentacle hair with the luminous effect and the little light bulbs on the end that are popular for fish swimming in deep, deep, dark waters. I also liked the whole concept of this creature being a torch in darkness, since it was definitely designed with the warrior feel in mind, far from a stealthy or roguish feel and it felt appropriate that they stood out.
It also borrows from the spiked horns on the back of a seahorse just to make it that bit more intimidating, but beyond that the rocky texture that has grown on top of the shiny, smooth skin gives in contrast and a form of natural armor. Speaking of natural armor,  before I redesigned the weapon as a seashell pole-arm it was a aqua themed sword. Frankly though, after some thought, while I liked the idea, it felt jarring for a nude sea creature to wield a sword, even if it was shell themed. I wanted it to look more primal and the shell pole-arm fits that role much better, while looking more threatening.

Back to the mood board though because at some point I feel I crossed a line, where in earlier stages it started to look just like a mash up of cool fish looking things that wasn't really working. See originally I'd used a shark tail, because sharks are awesome and I wanted that ferocity in my character, thing was the shark tail looked heavy on my character, like it would be far more appropriate on something that swam continuously instead of living primarily on the sea ground, it looked awkward and I decided it would be more fitting to have something light that my character could control and use while walking or standing naturally. It also looked much better because of the semi-transparent textures already in place with the hair and ears and made everything more complete. :)

Bonus sculpey model!  It had a weapon but I broke it. oops. 

I also bought way too much tissue paper. I don't know what I expected.