World Building 1 - Aquatic Life Paintover

This week, our task was to research and design our own underwater creature, and produce a paint over as a result.

Some of the main features I discovered about marine life were:

• They have gills on either side of their body, that connect to their lungs which allow them to breathe underwater.
• Most fish have sleek bodies in order to cut through water, with reduced friction.
• Their fins are normally made of spines.
• Most fish tend to have skeletons, despite their flexible body, normally made of cartilage.
• No external ears or eyelids.
• Fertilization takes place externally outside the body.
• Eyes are on either side of head, or some fish don't even have visible ones.
• Some fish like squids and jellyfish are spineless.
• The deeper you go underwater the weirder the fish tend to look.
• Fish that live around coral, can have some type of camouflage.

I also put together a small moodboard, in order to highlight key features as well as do a few sketches of the fish I've researched.

I also did a few sketches to get a few ideas, mainly concentrating on greatly differing designs in order to have variety in main features.

I settled for a combination between sketches 2 and 5. I liked the overall intimidating design of sketch 2, but I wanted to include more curves and the alien design of 5 in it's form.

Next stage, was to start creating a rough model in Mudbox.

Started sculpting the head from a simple sphere prefab, once I was satisfied with the details, I began to stretch out its body, and adding subdivisions for extra details and polys.

Started bringing out the creature's fins, and adding finger details to it's mouth. I also pulled out and sculpting it's back tail and fin, adding additional subdivisions to add more polys and smoothness to the model.

To create the correct pose, I added joints and put the fish into a decent pose. I also used Mudbox to edit the lighting and add additional shadows and detail.

I produced three different renders, with three different compositions and lighting, before deciding which one to use as the final render.

I took the render into photoshop, adding textures and some underwater effects, as well as tweaking the lighting.

I'm quite happy with how this project turned out, although I would of liked a bit more time to work on the paint over, possibly adding more finer details. But I am quite pleased with the sea monster's design, hopefully with more experience in mud box, I'll be able to create something in more detailed and authentic.