Summon Beast & Hookhound WiPs

 

While I wait for a couple of models to become available on the same day to pose as Barbarians, I decided to try my hand at monster drawings.  I've recently discovered Pathfinder, which has awesome art, and some really cool character classes I don't think D&D has.  One is the summoner, so I thought doing a small girl with big other-dimensional creature would make a good character class picture.  However, it quickly expanded to her in a fight, though I wasn't sure yet about who.  I added the goblins at first, but then wanted to add more, so I threw in a witch and ranger.  I kept wavering between the witch attacking the summoned beast or the goblins, since a fight between PCs can be a fine way to integrate them into the party afterward.

Then I thought maybe the beast was too cute, though I was okay with that at first since in my little narrative, the summoner wanted a companion for protection and friendship.  But nevertheless, I decided to try for something more complicated than "panther with horns and whip tails."  So I made it more like the other-dimensional beast it was supposed to be and a little like some imprisoned genie/demi-god.

I tried making the above scene out of super sculpey since the beast's anatomy was kind of off and I figured this would give me a nice reference to get perspective right.  It turns out using Sculpey is a lot harder than one might think.  It's very malleable and I couldn't hold it without it changing.  (I now realize that is why everyone uses tools, but there wasn't any in the college store.)  I ended up with really long pieces that I decided to turn into legs and I started creating a different creature.

This is a rough sketch based on the poorly constructed sculpey model.

I took some photos and put them together in Photoshop and ended up with this:

I really like the accidental old-man-mask on it.  It wasn't originally there but after I added it I really liked it.  It reminded me of this werewolf or the sphinxes from Mirrormask.  Animals with human faces can be really creepy, so a creature that hides its face behind a mask seemed interesting.  I also decided to add a man with a saddle, making this from a monster you would fight, or see in your nightmares, to just a weird creature tamed into being used.  The hooks are bouncy and used to run like the awesome prosthetic legs that make runners into superheroes.  They can also be used for climbing up rock walls or thick strong trees.  It can run on two legs for short periods of time though it tends to return to four legs to build up momentum again.

I decided to try subtraction and was going to do it with transparencies, but after messing with brush settings, I ended up with this.  I'm really happy.  It reminds me a lot of woodcuts, so I will definitely be playing around with this more to use in future pictures.  This isn't complete.  I need to add some more darks and detail.