Lord Sepmir

Project Brief

The brief was self-assigned, to design two major boss monsters fit for two opposing circles of hell. My plan was to make a basic character sheet for them both. This project is set in my world of Rotunnis, with a layered Hell, inspired by Dantes Inferno, and the Nine Hells from Dungeons and Dragons. I spent a lot of time researching Dantes inferno, as well as other games with similar monster designs. I also collected many moodboards of: animals, biblical art, yokai, bones, SFX makeup and deformed sculptures.

The backstory for these characters is that they were created by the Goddess of life, Genasis, to help better house the evil souls in Hell, as the King of the Hells was unable to manage for much longer. She created different layers to contain different sins, and a new Archdevil to rule each one. They were all originally humanoid, with vibrant colored skin and horns, slowly evolving over the years by rumors of what they looked like, deforming and corrupting them to become horrifying monsters.

Lord Sepmir rules the 7th circle, Violence. It is the hottest out of the nine circles, with constant fires that never go out. His design is reminiscent of that.

Animal Inspiration

I wanted to look at exceptionally violent animals to reflect his domain. I picked the leopard, dolphin, hyena and bear because they’re all famous for taking part in “Surplus Killing”, killing for fun.

I really liked the hyenas fur, especially when matted with blood, as well as the musculature of the leopard and bear. I thought the dolphins skin texture could be interesting as its so shiny. His skin could have a similar texture due to constantly sweating from the heat.

Animal Studies

Animal Studies

This was my first project doing creature design, so I did some animal studies from the images I found, creating many different sketches.

I then tried to create the studies again but only as silhouettes, exaggerating features that worked really well, to help me figure out which features were best to pick for my design. The hyenas form was definitely one of my favorites.

Style Guide

I created a style guide with different elements I wanted to use for my design.

There were a lot of different shapes and poses I liked, as well as textures.

I referenced this board a lot while developing the design silhouettes and sketches, as well as the final design through the rendering phase.

Silhouettes And Sketches

Finalising the Design

I wanted him to be insanely large, over 30ft tall, and extremely bulky and strong. The hair on his back would also have glass and metal sticking out of it, and his front arms have almost formed into stones.

After figuring out the final silhouette, I started the line work. I drew with the head first, flipping between the front and side profile for each feature. Once the lines were done I started colour, texturing and rendering.