Fox Swordsman - Creature Design - September 2017

Another creature design for the indie-developed, creature-battle style game that I contributed some early artwork for. For this particular creature, the brief gave it as the result of mutation of a Fox-like creature, making it into a six-eyed, bipedal character. I made it lean to give it the impression of speed and agility in combat. The designer originally wanted it to have six-eyes, then thought it would work better with two but I tried both approaches, believing the extra eyes would be useful for spatial awareness when sword fighting. This design was ultimately not used by the developer, in favour of a more brutish, imposing design by a very talented artist. My piece however, did help to influence the final direction and it was fun exploring the concept and suggesting changes to the initial brief. I've included several developmental sketches and iterations before my Finalised Concept was settled on. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the final creature in-game turned out!