Parasite-infected Spaceman Character

Creative Process

The idea of this character was the protagonist of a spiritual successor to Metroid Prime. He would have crashed on an alien planet and gotten infected by a parasitic growth. The parasite would act as your main weapon, and the cannon would drastically change shape depending on the type of beam being used. Eventually the character would get so infected, that the player wouldn’t be sure if they were playing as the spaceman, the parasite, or some combination of both.

This was the first fully modeled humanoid character I ever made. I first started with some silhouette exploration, before drawing, coloring and shading the first piece of art of the character. Then I made 3 different turn-arounds for the character, one without armor, one with armor, and one with armor and the parasite. Then I started sculpting the basic form in Zbrush. It was really tough making the organic shapes, since I’m still relatively new to Zbrush, so I did as much work as I could in Maya. This resulted in sculpting the basic body, parasite, and cannon in Zbrush, and then manually retoping them in Maya. I then modeled the armor, horns, helmet, boots, bones, and eyes in Maya. Then I UV’d everything and textured it in Substance Painter. After that I made a simple skeleton in Maya and posed him. The topology wasn’t made with prior experience to rigging, painting weights, and posing, so some of it is a bit goofed up in the final pose.

Model UV’d in Maya, textured in Substance Painter, and then posed in Maya.
Silhouette and pose exploration made in Procreate.
Final art sketched and inked in Procreate, and then colored and shaded in Photoshop.
Color scheme exploration done in Photoshop.
Armorless turnaround done in Procreate.
Armored turnaround done in Procreate.
Infected turnaround done in Procreate.
The start of the basic humanoid shape sculpted in Zbrush.
Parasitic growth sculpted in Zbrush.
Basic cannon shape sculpted in Zbrush.
Body imported into Maya, then manually retop’d. The armor pieces and boots directly attached to the body were also modeled in Maya and included in the retop.
Parasite and Cannon imported into Maya, and then manually retop’d into one mesh.
Additional armor pieces, helmet, backpack, and tubing modeled in Maya.
Parasite mesh integrated into body mesh. Horns, eyes, and bones modeled and added in Maya.
Basic skeleton used for posing made in Maya. The weights were also painted by me.