Lady Perfidia

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.

Lady Perfidia rules the 9th circle, Treachery. It is the coldest out of the nine circles, with blizzards and ice spikes everywhere. Her design is reminiscent of that.

Animal Inspiration

I wanted to look at animals that often represent betrayal, to reflect her domain. I picked the raven, scorpion, cat and rat because they’re all commonly used in stories as the character or symbol of betrayal.

I really liked the feathers of the crow, I thought the iridescent colours are reminiscent of how ice reflects, but they look sinister due to the black coloring. I also really like the scorpion's stinger and legs.

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 crow feathers, cat form, and scorpions legs really drew my attention.

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 her to be even larger than Lord Sepmir, over 40ft tall, and very slender and eerie. Her neck starts at a usual length, covered in feathers, but extends outwards revealing her pale blue skin.

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