Lava Lizard in Photoshop

Following on from the session in which we created realistic looking lava and managed to paint a monster using that effect, we were told by Steve that we were going to use the techniques that we had learnt during that session and put it into a piece of work of our own. The objective was to create our very own lava creature.

I really wanted to work on my 3-D skills and thought that it might be a good idea if I created something using a 3-D program such as Maya or Mudbox and took it into Photoshop and painted over the top. First things first I had to get some inspiration, what did I really want to create? What would be something that I would be proud of? I was in the middle of a discussion with a group of friends about the best race on a game series called "The Elder Scrolls" and that's when it hit me, I would love to do a lava twist on a lizard, a small one at least, something that hasn't been done before.

"Rage" demon on Dragon Age.

When I searched the internet for inspiration, there wasn't much to be honest, everything that I was looking at was all the same thing, so instead I didn't really look at the creature, I looked at the skin of it and saw how it flowed from its body. My main source of inspiration was the "rage demon" that features on the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition. The way that the body flows from the bottom of its body, whereas it has a fleshy top, to hold it all together.

Starting the sculpture.

I started up Mudbox, the 3-D modelling program where you can sculpt and was ready to start my piece. I was extremely lucky to find out that Mudbox has a variety of templates and one of them is a geko type lizard. Instantly, I selected the template that I wanted to use and went away carving the pieces that would not feature in my lizard.

I firstly started off by using the grab tool and pulling apart the neck. I wanted him to have a natural brace around his neck, just like that of a lion or a velociraptor. It is something that is like a warning to people, telling them to stay away.

The next thing that I did in this was create pivots and put them on my creature. By doing this I could move my creature about, such as the legs and place them in a certain position. This made it look like the creature was moving and was extremely simple to do. Just by selecting the pivot and then the move tool I could place it anywhere that I want.

Moving the pivot on the lizard.

The next thing that I did was use the tools that I had learnt when making the T-Rex in Mudbox. I wanted to grab something off of the internet and project it onto my creature. As this creature was going to be a lava/magma creature, the main idea was grab a picture of rocks for his body and paint it all over.

Going on the internet.

I started to sculpt the picture using the projection tool and setting the rock image that I found as a stamp. Using the sculpt tool and literally painting over the top to get the texture of the rock onto the character, it gives the skin of the character a really rocky feel and gives the right effect to I wanted to have.

The projection tool.

The next thing that I decided to do was use the projection tool, but with this time I would use the stencil to import a picture. With this one I decided that I would get an image of magma and would then paint it onto my character. It is pretty straight forward as all I have to do is place the image over my lizard and just drag the brush across to get a representation  onto the model.

Selecting lava as a stencil.

The next stage of the creature was to render it and take it into Photoshop and paint it over the top. As I have been working on the position of the character right from the start, I didn't need to make it so that he was in a decent position. The rendering is also quite easy. All I had to do was go into Mudbox and use the preset settings, then from there all I had to do would be to adjust the settings to my liking and then save it as a JPEG.

Rendering the creature.

The final render of the lizard.

After I had got the final render and saved it, I imported the lizard into Photoshop in a file that I had already set up. I started of the piece by giving it a black background. By doing this, it meant that I could clearly see the piece, and and glowing effects that I was going to give it.

The next stage was creating the lava paint. I did this I when I created a lava monster a few days back. The lava was very simple to create. All I had to do was create a new layer and select the white paint brush and dab some on the layer. From here, I changed the color of the outer layer to red and the color of the inner layer yellow. This meant that when I painted, The lava paint came out and looked very interesting.

Creating the lava of the creature.

The next thing that I could do was start to paint the lava into the creature on the page. The only problem with this is that I had to pick out the points that would show the lava a lot stronger in different positions. The way that the brush works, the more I paint in a position, the brighter the position will be. After I had textured the skin with a magma materiel on Mudbox, I could use the brush and follow the lines in the skin to create a realistic looking creature.

One I had marked out the parts that were gonna have the splits in the skin, the next thing that I did was make the creature glow. I wanted to give of the effect that the creature was emitting light, due to the heat. The way that I did this was that I replicate it and then selected the outline of the creature, then deleting the image and keeping the outline, I created a glow and then rubbed out the parts were lava was not shown.

Giving the creature a glow.

The last thing that I needed to do was to set the scene. This was was because the picture looked extremely bland with just a black background and I wanted to make the piece seem much more realistic. The first thing that I did was go onto the internet and find a rock to place the creature on. I placed it onto the scene and arranged it so that it worked perfectly. I created a new layer and painted under his body so that it looked like he actually had a shadow. After blurring the rock, I moved on and painted under his legs to make it look like he was burning the rocks that he was stepping on.

Setting the scene.

The next thing that I did was finding a suitable background that would work with my creature. At  first I tried using a background with a cliff side to show this creature in a natural environment. I grabbed a picture and then decided that it would look much better and realistic if I blurred the background and create foreshortening. Below is the result that I got.

I was quite proud with this design but still felt that the background was not suiting to the creature, so I went on and grabbed another one.

Final design 1.

I felt that this one was much better and the background really mixed in with the creatures origins and looked quite professional, I especially liked the red mist in the background and how the piece ties itself together.

I gave this creature a bit of a back story to help create realism. The creature known as Vulcan's mask (Vulcan being the Roman god of volcano's). He was first discovered when explorers in Rome found all these little creatures wading about near pompay. Its even said that their origins are directly linked to the famous eruption. All though they are cute and a look friendly, these animals pack a hell of  punch and the lava acts a strong defense mechanism.

I would defiantly have to say that I think that the second one is a much better piece. The whole feel of it makes it feel a lot darker, like an actual creature that does exist. If I were to do this piece again, I would perhaps add some more detail at the Mudbox section, make this creature stand out a bit more. I do like the footprints on the stone, making it look like he has scorched the rock.

Final design 2.