Nathan Aubin

DESCRIPTION: The goal was to create a series of three figurehead characters to represent three factions within a hypothetical strategy game. The themes were “parasitic psychics”, “militaristic mutants”, and “sci-fi scientists”, though as of now only the first is complete.

PROCESS: I started out exploring what directions might make for the most interesting character. For the parasite portion of it, I looked at various real-world examples, from fungus, to insects, and eventually settled on a tape worm sort of look, since tentacles are usually pretty easy to associate with aliens, and ribbon-like structures would give me a lot of room to explore in terms of architecture and clothing. As for the humanoids themselves, I knew immediately I wanted to explore a religious direction, especially since that would help distinguish them from the other two factions.

During the sketch phase, I eventually settled on a Judeo-Christian “biblically accurate angel” theme as seen in the sketch on the far left, focusing on trying to reference halos and ophanim in the primary headpiece, as well as a pose based on those seen in some renaissance paintings of saints.

During color exploration I found that any color scheme where the figurehead had a normal human skin tone just didn’t feel right, and ultimately that a marble/porcelain appearance would best fit the character in terms of making it seems more inhuman.

Finally, I cleaned up the line work and rendered it. I usually aim for a more painterly render style somewhere adjacent to realistic, as seen in the other projects I have uploaded here, however for this I wanted to attempt something different to show that I can, or at least am willing to try.