Nathan Aubin

DESCRIPTION: The goal was to take a pre-existing folk monster and reimagine it for use in a horror project.

PROCESS: Starting with research, I looked into a number of folk monsters that might’ve worked for this project, and ended up with spriggans, fae creatures known for stealing cattle, kidnapping, ruining fields, and robbing houses. Looking up what other artists have done, most choose to depict spriggans as having tree-like features, which while an interesting visual direction doesn’t quite match with the description I found of them being baby-headed old men.

I immediately had a strong image in my head of what I wanted the final render to look like, trying to emphasize the almost grey alien-like behaviors and appearance, so the sketches were mostly just iterations of the head design.

Taking the two I was happiest with, I gave them a rough color, and then from there a rough render of one of them. I wasn’t happy with it at all though, so I discarded them and spent more time exploring colors and ideas until I found a direction I was happy with.