Concept Artist Research

Over the course of the last few weeks of creating my character and its environment, I've been picking out concept artists over a range of different sources in order to try and get a grasp of the textures, looks and emotions provolked from each artists work.

My first characters resembling animal headed humans and Armoured Anthro's naturally lead me to search for artists focusing on anthropomorphic works. The first artist that caught my eye was Kekai Kotaki, a Hawaiian concept artist currently working on Guild Wars 2. The first thing that attracted me to this picture was the armoured canine like creature, I was naturally drawn to this picture as I have always had a fascination with anthropomorphic animals and for the first part of my character research, designed all creatures to be heavilly armoured and generally stood upright. Least to say this piece ticked all the boxes.



Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars Concept



Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars 2 Charr Hell Bringer

Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars 2 Charr Gunner



Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars 2 Battle Concept

Another piece that caught my eye was Kekai's Magic Card, "Sphinx Of Uthuun". 

Kekai Kotaki - Sphinx Of Uthuun

This perticular work of his challeneged my origional thoughts on what I wanted my character to look like, as the character had developed from being a fairly ordinary looking armoured beast, to wanting it to resemble some of the Egyptian Gods being animal headed humans. The Sphinx Of Uthuun as previously stated challeneged and questioned what I wanted my own character to look like, as in some ways roll reversal came into play, having a human headed beast rather than a beast headed human. This stirred thoughts up in my withered psyche: 

• "Which combination would be the more fitting?"
• "What design would be more unique?"
• "Could a combo of the two artworks make one successful piece? EG: Armoured Sphinx?"
• "Which art form would best portray my own characters morals and beliefs through visual aesthetics?"

Other works which caught my eye focusing on similar concepts include Ben Mauro's Ape hybrid which I found extremely interesting as the thought of drawing animals with other animals had not previously crossed my mind but made for some exciting research surprisingly back to my days of working in Snakes n' Adders specialist reptile & Invertabrate shop and recalling on the many cross bred snakes and creepy crawlies that used to find their way into many a coustomer's hands.


Ben Mauro - Ape Hybrid

The final artist I looked at for my first step of the character creation process was Dark Natasha. Dark Natasha has been an influential artist to me for years now and I have always admired her work, focusing strictly on anthropomorphicic beasts, Dark Natasha manages to combine traditional tribe behaviour, clothing and coustoms in our past and present world with that of the instincts of animals, generally pack hunters such as Wolves, Lions and Hyeenas.


Dark Natasha - Tribeceratops



Dark Natasha - Cougar Medicine