I spent a lot of time working out the design of the beast from the Tithe. When I think about the “monsters” of the Eyrewood I have some very specific ideas for how they should look. For me the most important thing is that they look like they could be real animals. I like the idea of twisting and combining creatures rather than creating something from scratch. I put together this collection of images from my sketchbook.
My goal was to create a Treant, but I wanted to put a twist on it. For a while the idea was it would be a creature with a tree on its back and it would burrow under the ground. I went through all sorts of creatures and I think Tycho actually liked the turtle looking one the most. It had a bit too much of a Torterra vibe for my liking though.
I really liked the Rhino with wooden horns but I wasn’t sold on it yet. I had a great chat with Kiko and he inspired me to think about the branches as the mane of a lion. The first sketch was too much lion not enough monster so I started looking at pictures of lion skulls. The final design is essentially a wooden lion’s skull with branches forming the mane and I kept the big heavy body of the rhino.
I have a couple high res panels for you today.
you can click on those for crazy high res.
only one page left and then it’s back to Gabe and Tycho. Thanks for going along with us for the Tithe.
-Gabe out
