Halloween Monster Design

In the spirit of Halloween Week, our brief was to create a scary monster. Being a very broad prompt, I initially found it difficult to think of a direction to go in. So collecting images for my moodboard, they were not very focussed and rather were just images or designs I found appealing that vaguely fit the theme.

I found the idea of creating a giant monster quite appealing, inspired by the monsters from films such as Pacific Rim and The Host. However, whilst thinking about this I found that I was stepping too far into 'gentle giant' monster territory, which didn't exactly fit the prompt of 'scary'. So I eventually decided to scrap this idea completely, and focus on creating something more disturbing. Still, I was inspired by the limb shapes of the creatures I had studied, and eventually came to the idea of putting these strange proportions on a human figure.

This was a mockup I did for the final design image of my creature. Initially its face was a mask of some kind, but then I eventually decided that it could actually be the shell of a bug instead, which attaches to its victims face, and causes the mutations which makes the monster look so disturbing. I chose to include a small bit of blood dripping down from the face, to indicate where the bug digs its claws into the victim. Still, I didn't want to rely too much on gore to make it scary, I wanted it to be more sinister and uncomfortable than gruesome.

This is the final result I had for my monster. I tried to push the lighting to give a more ominous feel, however I did struggle with the colours on this piece, finding it difficult to make it interesting. I also included another bug in the piece to show how it functions when not attached to a human.