CREATURE DESIGN
(HORIZON ZERO DAWN CONCEPT)
It is the creature design project I did at Vancouver Film School. For each student, we pick one style and follow it to design the character and creature. I chose to follow the style of Horizon Zero Dawn, and create a creature based on the story setting.
We also got assigned a plot to follow. The plot I chose is: "An Ancient healer has to find rare mystical ingredients deep into the forest to help him/her save the life of a peculiar traveler."
There are two characters in the plot, and I decided to make my creature the traveler.
As usual, I started by researching the creatures from Horizon Zero Dawn. Based on what I found, most of the harmful creature in this game is machines. There are also some normal creatures such as bunnies. However, since I wanted to design my creature in this unique world setting, I decided to make my creature as a machine.
For understanding more about this game, I purchased it and played it for a little bit. There is one thing I did not notice when doing the research: each of the harmful creatures has at least one weakness. Most of them have their weaknesses in their eyes or the radar on their back. I tried to design different weakness at the exploration stage, the red parts are the weaknesses.
Based on the plot, this creature should be helped by another character. Since its life is in danger, I assumed it has just been attacked and maybe lost some body parts which matter its life. However, I still want to make it not too weak to keep it's own alive. Instead of breaking its radar or weakness, I destroyed the body part it use to attack others. It will not die in a short time, but it would not be able to hunt as well. I also did some variation on the posing. I want to explore how it'll react in different scenarios.
Here is the wardrobe section. Based on what I know from my research, I realize that a signature body part could make a creature stand out. I explored more possibilities at this stage by changing the amount or shape of certain body parts.
Here's the line art for two of the poses I made.
The final render art.
As I said before, each creature has a weakness. Same with most of the creatures in Horizon Zero Dawn, I made the eyes a weakness. Other than that, the green part on its back, the battery part, will also affect its life.