Visual Arts and Animation: Lava Creature

This week's last was to create a 'dark, rocky lava creature with a cracked surface'. I really enjoyed this task as I got to design something cool looking and put some of our most recent Photoshop techniques into practice to make something I'm very proud of. The initial design sketches yielded some interesting results. I toyed with the idea of having a lava lizard with rocky scales and a big mouth pouch full o' lava, I also sketched out another creature, armoured and evil looking, but both of these sketches and ideas felt more like individual characters rather than creatures.

I'm actually very fond of both of these designs, and I'll likely work them up in the future and use them for something else. The design I settled on for this however, was something a little more traditional. I went for a lava rock golem, as I felt it best showed off the lava aspect of the creature designs. I also like how even from the sketch, it looks as though it could have erupted from the ground with cracks rubble covering its body. This, combined with the opportunity to test out the skills we learnt in the most recent lesson made me choose this design.

I then went about recreating this pencil sketch in Photoshop. I started by laying down some flat grey colours, and using a number of Multiply layers to add in different levels of tone. The addition of shadow really made the flat, sharp edges of the rock pop out, and the highlights helped to make the shapes more defined and detailed. I began toying around with the colour of the rock, and the lava within the creature.

After deciding to stick to a traditional colour, I used a combination of painting, lava textures and images and layer styles to make my lava. I then found a nice stylised lava environment on the internet, which I dropped in the background to add some context and sense of place, and it really completes the image. I definitely want to create some of my own landscapes and environments in the future, but for this piece, the one I chose works very well.

The Molten Golem Brutes are sentient lava beings wrought from the core of a volcano and enslaved, used as a personal army for the highest bidder. The creatures are naturally aggressive and dangerous; their ability to shift and change their shape due to their molten lava core makes them a lethal opponent to even the most skilled fighter.