Tentacle Monster Homework Assignment.

For this assignment, we were tasked with designing a tentacle monster and producing a finished colour concept of the creature. We were asked to start off by creating a mood board in order to get some inspiration.

This mood board is a compilation of various tentacle monsters that I have seen in films as well as some concepts I found online.

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This is my first sketch. This sketch is inspired by various depictions of Cthulhu I found on the internet. It isn't meant to be an actual depiction of Cthulhu, but similar in the sense that it is a large mythological sea creature.

 This is my second sketch. This sketch is inspired primarily by the concepts behind the Facehugger design from Alien. One of the ideas behind the Facehugger was that it was meant to be an alien 'rape' of a human. The mouth of my design is supposed to vaguely resemble certain parts of the human anatomy, in order to imply how it might consume a person.

This was my final sketch. I deliberately made it a very simple and plain design, as I knew I would have to create a final concept in colour, and colour is something I struggle with. I scanned it into my computer so I could begin to work on it in Photoshop.

To help me, I chose to use the technique we were shown in our second Visual Design session. First, I added a multiply layer of basic flat colour.

I then painted over that layer to create some basic tone.

Finally, I then tried to blend the shades by setting Brush Opacity and Flow to Pen Pressure. What I found most difficult was trying to visualize in my head how this 2D design would occupy a 3D space, and how light would fall on it realistically. This is the biggest challenge I face when painting from my head, and adding colour adds another level of complexity that I have to factor in. This is why I find it difficult to work in colour when painting from my head.