Designing, Researching and Referencing

At this point I was trying to nail down a clearer design, as well as pulling research and references from different sources.

I like to start by doing side on silhouettes, its a habit picked up from watching the Gnomon masterclass. I feel like particularly for this character, since swimming will be a big part of its design we need to be able to see where about on its body the particular appendages related to this activity are. Its easier to plan the design as a whole from the side.

This are two of the Kaiju from "Pacific Rim", Im using them to reference the way that their skin covers their body and how it folds and stretches across the underlying muscles. Although the skin on my creature I will want to be a lot smoother (akin to a dolphins, for aerodynamic purposes).

Thinking a bit about the locomotion of the creature, I had the initial idea of having flagellum-like appendages that would appear like another set of arms, but instead of fingers have flagella. A way to assist with swimming and manoeuvring underwater.

Diagram of the various configurations of flagella found on bacteria in nature.

Eventually though this morphed into becoming something more like what Slattern has, a sort of series of tentacles/tail-like appendages. I referenced Slattern because he moves in a similar way to how I invision this creature will move, a kind-of dolphin kick.

So here we can see how I'm trying to make the design look sleeker and more graceful than it was previously, aswell as thinking about how it would mechanically work.

Also thinking about how he looks from the front, a lot of design issues were resolved around about this stage, mainly how to make him look graceful as-well as retaining a sense of purpose for the design. I wasnt really fond of the tail that echoes a kind of shawl or cape in this image.

And so I had a further look at how to solve this issue and I decided on a combinat

So here I started trying to practice drawing a more slender body for him, trying to find a more graceful look. I also started experimenting with the idea of the skin that forms his tail be somewhat of a membrane between his arms as-well, akin to how a bat's wing works.

 

Really starting to play more with this idea here, I kept going back to references like Manta-Rays as they have shapes that could support the sort of silhouettes that this would form. However I wasn't too happy with where it was going at this stage. As the main issue was that the second set of arms would always get in the way of the membrane when the first set was raised in front of the creature.

This is where I feel like I solved it, by having the folds attached to both sets of arms, and removing the flagella on the second set. So that the creature has these arms that dont quite have a membrane between them but this area of skin that, when he is swimming can be folded around his body to create a sleeker more aerodynamic shape.

A more in depth look at how the arms would look and how they would work, just trying to clarify it to myself. From this point onwards I want to take things into Photoshop and starting painting up better concept images of the creature, aswell as thinking about colours and materials.

I remembered this guy after I had thought up the design for the wings, a "Precursor" from Pacific Rim. The way his arms work with the flaps of skin is sort of what I am aiming for.