World Building 4 - Halloween Monster

With Halloween coming out, we were given the creative freedom to design and produce a Halloween piece of our choice. I opted to go for a painting in Photoshop, as it has been awhile so I've done one from scratch.

I put together a moodboard of various monsters and Halloween designs, in hopes of finding some influence for my work.

I was particularly fond of the slender and creepy tree like designs of the Jack o Lantern and the Day of the dead skeletons.

Went with some silhouette designs for my sketches, I felt capturing a shambling and willowy form was the my best bet at producing some ideas. I took a liking to to the bottom three designs, and wanted to along the lines of that sort of ghoulish/alienish humanoid creature.

Took the idea of a slender ghoul further with three different behaviors. I liked the frame of the first one, but I really wanted to incorporate the frankensteined and stitched together form of the third monster.

First step was to open Photoshop and fill a document with a medium grey color.

Using a rough sketch as my starting point, I started painting in some basic tonal values and shade. I also darkened the background, so I had an idea of what atmosphere to be going for.

Once I had my very basic shades, I started working in more details on the ghoul, such as the stitches and shadows around the muscles. Once happy with the creature's form I turned my attention to the background and started painting in additional shadows and tone.

I continued to paint in the shadows, along with adding highlights. I dropped in some textures on multiply layers to add detail to the background. Lastly I began working on adding some colour and refining the lighting to highlight the detail of the monster.

I'm fairly pleased with the results of this painting. Although I did not get enough time to add to the finish that I wanted to the monster, I feel I did set out and achieve the level of mood and lighting that I had visualized in my head for the Halloween theme. I think with more time and practice I would of definitely of liked to render and smooth out the monster's form even further, along with adding additional details.