Just thought it be nice to have some progress logs of some concept work.
The Chimera Redesign painting was for a CGHub submission, one of the Creature Planets topics. I've always liked how the site encourages WIP shots, so I've decided to archive some WIP posts of some of the work that I do from now on.
Started with base anatomy - trying to figure out how to pose the creature. I looked up a bunch of references of lions and goat heads. The snake tail I wasn't so sure about. I was also trying to figure out how to redesign the Chimera and put my own twist to it, so I went with combining the goat's head with the lion's head.
At first I was going to start painting with just the base anatomy, but I didn't think it was interesting enough. So I thought about another twist I could add to it: armor! I love drawing sci-fi super soldiers, that kind of thing, so why not put armor on this guy, too? :'D
But then the sci-fi idea shifted into this molten rock/lava look. It worked out because it matched the backstory of the origin of the Chimera's name: a volcano dubbed the same title. I looked up a bunch of reference imagery for lava flows, lava rock formations, fire, and obsidian (for the horns) for this portion of the process.
I wasn't happy with the snake tail and the composition of the first pass, so I expanded the canvas and tried to make a more interesting snake tail. I went with a cobra because of their cool hood shape. I also rotated the whole body of the Chimera a bit to make his pounce-like gesture more pronounced.
And after a day's work of consecutive hours of painting, this was the final product. Tried to push the background away from the main subject, but I also didn't want to push it too far that it would look abstract. In any case, I was happy with the way this piece turned out.
What I learned from this painting:
- Painting lava and fire. Also more practice with obsidian's specularity.
- Lion's head anatomy.
- More practice with simple backgrounds for a character concept.
I'll definitely try to post more of these WIP progress logs in the future. Shrimp out!
