Hadopelagic King v2 - WIP 1 - Reshaping the King

Always like my Crab Boï, but I feel like I learned a lot since 3 years ago, and I'm making a second version with more credible articulations, menacing shapes and imposing stance. I'm imagining it coming out of the water. It's going to be a long journey, since I want to UV that monster and texture it in Substance Painter.... yep, It'll take a while but it's getting somewhere!

 Sculpted in ZBrush

Hadopelagic King Turn Around

Hadopelagic King Final Shot

ZBrush

Photoshop

Hadopelagic King - WIP 5 - In More Details

Spikes... so... many spikes.

At this point the sculpt is over 31 million polygons, so it's really testing the capacity of both my PC and ZBrush. Had a couple of crashes, but nothing fatal. Next step, the colors!

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Photoshop

Hadopelagic King - WIP 4 - Creating Alphas

Other modifications to the upper mouth

Also made these today. Texturing will be a lot of fun.

ZBrush
Photoshop

Hadopelagic King - WIP 3 - Cutting the Face

Today I worked on detailing the exoskeleton. I modified his eyes to make them more crab-like, the overall shapes are sharper and pointy and his mouth's got new teeth.

Then I separated all his different facial shell pieces so they feel more like independently moving parts, so he could, in theory, be capable of minimal facial expressions while keeping that crustacean style.

Tomorrow I'll begin putting more shell details like little studs and spikes here and there. Can't wait to texture that dude! 

ZBrush

Photoshop

Hadopelagic King - WIP 2 - Cutting the Pieces

Decided to cut all his exoskeletal plates into different pieces so they feel more like... different pieces.

Next step will be to work on each piece individualy to push things further and add more details to the shapes.

ZBrush

Photoshop

Hadopelagic King - WIP 1- Getting the Idea

Taking a break from Wonder Woman. I miss sculpting creatures so I had fun this evening. Still a work in progress though, I'm going to finish it tomorrow... or should I say later? Wow... time passed. Anyway, here he is, the proud ruler of the abyss! The most noble crustacean! The Hadopelagic King!

Early stage when he had no face

Trivia: "Hadopelagic" refers to the Hadal Zone, the oceanic space from depth of around 6,000 metres (20,000 ft) to the bottom. The hadal zone is generally known to have low population and low diversity of marine life.... but what if...

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Photoshop