Alien Concept

My brother called me a while ago asking me to do some concept art for a character in a story he is writing. He told me he wanted an evil alien, with legs bent backward like the hind legs of a dog, the tail, but an overall human form.  So I set out to work. I fired up Painter and remembered why I don’t use that program, it’s super slow. I have version 10, maybe 11 is faster, but with some of Photoshop’s upcoming features they might have missed out on their opportunity to solidify their place in the market.

So after switching to Photoshop I finished off my first idea. I actually really like it, but it seems a bit too campy to be menacing. I just like ray-guns.

So after working on that I decided to go in a more menacing direction while keeping a humanoid form. By pushing the eyes a little more to the side and working on the mouth I wanted to make the alien like very animalistic at a closer glance.

I also wanted to make the claws look menacing and all the muscles to be very fibrous and tight. The idea being that the creature appears to be wound tight and lean enough to come after you. There’s nothing less scary than a big lumbering alien. It needs to be able to move quickly.

So that’s how it turned out. I had a lot of fun and will look for opportunities to do similar things again. Let me know what you think.