Designing a Japanese folklore demon enemy
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Last week I started designing a melee type demon enemy for our game. The enemy spawns to a demon realm in a 1800’s Japanese setting where the old clashes with modern. The design process was quite interesting since our graphical style tries to mimic the Japanese woodblock print which is a very flat 2d drawing style. I’ve yet to learn that style yet but here’s how the demon design process went. I started out by researching old Japanese folklore demons and quickly noticed that the classic Oni mask was a commonly used representation of a Japanese demon. I decided to use that as the face for the demon and proceeded to learn how to draw it and at the same time tried to pick up some definitive characteristics from the mask so I could later on simplify the linework and detail while still keeping the aesthetic of an Oni mask. Here is my inital try on the Oni mask:
At the same time a more general idea of the enemy had been forming in my head. The idea was that the enemy would be this huge brute with a slouching troll-like body and posture, who would smash his enemies with slow but powerful attacks. This was because of the fact that he was a melee character. I continued by designing his body shape, which I made an upside down pyramid to make him look powerful. After that I made a sketch of the demon from the front view to clarify the aesthetic to myself better. I also added some spiky hair coming out under his mask to add to the demonic and animalistic look. Here is the front view sketch and some body shapes: As I drew the bigger picture of the demon I more concretely stumbled upon the design of the weapon which I had not thought about much. So I initially thought that it could be a broken katana which would fit the Japanese aesthetic, but then I began thinking that it should be a more strength portraying weapon like a hammer, club or a big axe. I ended up on a two-handed sword type of a weapon because of it’s smooth looks and it plays well into the game’s theme. Finally my greatest problem was how to portray all this sideways because I am not very experienced on drawing side views. So after some practicing I ended up with the version I will show below, but first I want to note that he has an extra hand on his side which I drew for the purpose of experimenting on multiple pairs of limbs but I deemed it unnecessarily complicated to implement as well as unnecessary for the aesthetic. The next step will be to implement the design digitally.  |
