Crimson CHOW #24 - Underwater Assassin

[CoreyH]

Crimson Character of the Week #24

»Underwater Assassin«

The best of the CHOWs will be picked by an anonymous poll in the Finals thread and the winner is given the opportunity to pick the theme of the next CHOW's design, as well as becoming the title banner for that week! So go hard, design something interesting and unique!

Guidelines:

• No photograph paint overs, must be 100% original work. (See next rule for exception)
  
• 3D is permitted and renders MAY be used as whole or in part of a painting, as long as YOU created the work. Pre-made and/or purchased, online, assets are forbidden.
  
• There is no restriction on the character's gender, time period or culture.
  
• Studies are recommended, but not required.
  
• There is no restriction on image formats (horizontal, vertical, square).
  
• Environment backgrounds are optional.
  

Rules:

• You must post at least one WIP in the WIP thread to be accepted into the final poll.
  
• Finals must be posted in the finals thread before the deadline.
  
• At least 3/4 of the character must be visible (minimum from the knees up).
  
• Only ONE character.
  
• Only ONE submission per person in the finals thread.
  
• No fanart. We want to see your original, unique interpretations!
  
• Voting will be held for 5 days after the deadline.
  
• In an event of a tiebreaker, a winner will be chosen through a randomized name picker.
  
  

Deadline is Feb 7th @ UTC: 23:59

-+|| WIP THREAD ||+-

[gerbenpasjes]

Nice Corey!

I'll be joining! I never really draw characters or creatures so this is going to be very difficult for me.
I've made a tiny little planning for myself in case (and I will) lose hope that I can draw something decent.

- research + design ideas
- pick an idea, sketch
- sketch some more, go into VR
- VR it some more
- VR export, render
- paint on the render
- post it

[gerbenpasjes]

after some research, I've come up with a giant squid-like creature with bug features who stalks the underwater reefs of [tbd]. He camouflages not by way of a squid, but like the assassin bug, by carrying the corpses (read: ships and submarines) of his victims on his back. 

[Jana]

Hey, I´m new to the forum, I hope it is alright if I participate as well.
For the challenge I wanted to try and make something scary. This was my first idea.
Its a humanoid creature based on a anglerfish. I made some sketches, but I am not sure I can pull it off.
I struggle especially with the mouth and teeth. But we´ll see :)





This is the reference I used:

[Artloader]

@gerbenpasjes and @jana: Wonderful start guys, I'm excited to see your entries evolve - keep it going!

It's awesome to get some community challenges going again on here - I usually struggle to find the time to complete a weekly challenge but I thought I would get involved this time to help with the community spirit :).

Here's the beginnings of my entry along with some reference imagery - I'll try to invent a back-story for him as I go but he is going to be some kind of octopus-dude-assassin:

[Jana]

Hey, it is great that we are now already three people participating :)
It is a long time since I started a project like this and I am not even sure how to aproach it. I watched some artwork process videos and tried to clean the lineart a bit and start working on values, but I am bad at values and not even sure if I want to colour it this way or maybe a little less 3D. I guess I´ll just go with the flow and see if I like the result.

[gerbenpasjes]

I just realized that COW is not the same as CHOW. Oops. I'll try and make something decent out of it anyway, even though I am really terrible at designing characters haha.

@jana nice start! Don't go into the details too fast, keep it loose before committing to a composition and value structure would be my tip. To help yourself, paint on a tiny canvas without any layers.

@artloader sick! I would try to make the octopus appendages fit/blend with the human anatomy & skeleton.

[mixedmax]

Nice, I don't know why I just discovered this now and not earlier.
Really nice challenge. I hope I'll find a time window over the weekend to take part too :)

Cheers!

[gerbenpasjes]

Heya. So I did the scene and design in VR using Gravity Sketch, and rendered it in Blender with some modifications. 



Design phase sheet, pretty simple but straightforward. Not going to add too much backstory to this idea, it's just for me to find the right reference and storytelling for the painting later on. 

The basic idea is that the world's submerged, so the surviving human tribes have moved their hunting grounds to underwater. This comes with cool-looking scuba suits and adaptive camouflage, as well as guns and scuba-packs (jet-packs for underwater) that work on compressed air. 



And here's the start of that painting. It's very dark and moody right now so I have to make sure the character reads properly before I start noodling. Painting on 1000px by 1000px canvas to make sure I can't mess up. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone's work :)

[Jana]

Thank you for the tip gerbenpasjes ! I will do that next time. This week I have the problem that I don´t have a lot of time on the weekend, so I decided to just go with the first sketch and try.

This is what I have got so far. I know its not really good, but I can´t figure out how to take it further. The more I work on it the messier it gets :D So maybe this is just the limit for now, till I study some more.

[CoreyH]

So much awesome work here!
Bitten off a bit more than I can chew this week, but Ill still try and get an entry in.

WIPs so far.

[Ash]

Great work everyone!





And some sketches

[Ash]

Took this as far as I could.




I also did a quick color scheme.




And this bad boy was my inspiration: crocodylus acutus