Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Massive Darkness: Overseer

This is it, my last figure I sculpted for the game, the Overseer. When I saw some of the posts in the KS comments section wanting a Beholder-like figure I was snickering to myself. Something you should know is that I went way off-base with this guy as he wasn't even on, "The List." When looking over what the GG crew wanted I noticed there wasn't anything like a beholder-ish creature in there and I thought that would be a fun creature to have in a dungeon crawl game. So I decided to add this guy into my sculpting roster and see what Guillotine Games said about it. Again, it's a figure of my design and also, one that was not requested.

I've never been a fan of the original art of the beholder but I liked the concept. As years have gone by there have been plenty of artists who have done their rendition of the monster which have helped me appreciate the strangeness of the creature and assist in portraying it's general creepiness. I wanted to redesign it and make it more hopefully unique to the game.

Insectile mandibles instead of a slitted mouth, a crustacean carapace of natural armor and eyes everywhere helped make it stand apart but the tentacles were kind of a necessity and proved to be a hang-up point in getting this figure done. They guy was supposed to be floating but I was pretty sure the production crew could not do transparent floating stands just for one figure and sculpting some kind of effect to simulate flying sounded like a potential nightmare so the addition of tentacles seemed a necessity. I had done a set of them based off of a Portuguese Man O War but they looked terrible! Once I had all the tentacles on and got a good look in it's entirety I got very frustrated. This didn't look at all like what I was going for so I had to set it down for a couple of weeks while I worked on the other figures and thought about it.

Once I had a chance to look it over again I realized there was too much mass below the sphere of the body, it lost it's floating theme I was trying for and instead looked like it was balancing on a pile of tubes so I drank a bit of vodka to get up the courage to go after the figure with knife and cut them all off. Once that was done I restricted the tentacles to only three primary tendrils to balance on with a couple of smaller ones tucked around the bigger. This helped a lot in keeping the mass of the figure up high in the sphere where I needed it to be. After that I was much more happy with the sculpt; it had a touch of weightlessness, it had motion and it looked alien. The GG crew said they liked it and it got sent off.

What I really enjoy about the character is the write up they did for it (which I just saw today)




I thought this was an awesome idea and very I'm happy with the concept of it's origins and the art is great too!

Here are the pictures for the final sculpt...




















One last note: since you cannot see it, under its mandibles there is a sucker-like mouth opening. I didn't envision this guy chewing his food but rather using these articulated mouth-parts to scoop and stuff food into it's orifice. Fun.

There he is, the last of my contributions to this project. Hope you have fun playing it and enjoy fighting the beasts!

15 comments:

  1. Jason, I was one of the louder voices asking for a beholder (Lord Blinkerton!) and I have to say Thank You! for an absolutely amazing and unique take on it. This thing is sure to cast dread in the hearts of my heroes as they battle through the dungeon. :)

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    1. Glad you like him! I think I got done (finally) with this guy back in April but I had started him way earlier. While he sat on my desk and I was trying to figure out what kind of corrections he needed I got the Cliffbreaker Cyclops, the Nightmare Thing and Minotaur all done so I had plenty of time to ponder my mistakes. Anyway, hope you have fun with it!

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  2. Your sculpts are the #1 reason I am considering backing this kickstarter. I wasn't really interested until Bob, aka Nightmare Thing, showed up that I started considering it for real. The Spear Maiden Cyclops and Lord Tusk look great. This sculpt though blows them all away. Absolutely amazing work. Great to see that it came from your own interest as well and not from someone else's art. Can't wait to see more amazing monsters from your mind.

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    1. Thank you, glad you like it! We'll see if anyone actually wants me to do something like this again since most of the sculpts that I did on my own got pretty mixed reviews. Who knows if anyone would want to give me that much power again? Mua-ha-ha-ha!

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    2. Most of the sculpts you did on your own got "pretty mixed reviews?" Seriously? They're far and away the best that CMON have produced!

      I agree with Joshua - I wasn't interested in this KS until your sculpts showed up, same as for Black Plague, where all of your self-designed sculpts also drew me in. If I were a games company, I'd hire you as a concept artist / designer as well as a sculptor. (But please don't ever stop sculpting to become a designer full-time. There are some very talented traditional sculptors in this field, but not enough that you wouldn't be sorely missed. And your traditional sculpts blow the ever-increasing percentage of digital sculpts out of the water.)

      Seriously, I want to join the Jason Hendricks fan club at this point. If CMON ever did a project where you lead the miniature concept design that played to your strengths and tastes that would be one fantastic looking game.

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    3. Wow! That is mighty praise, thank you!

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  3. No words... Well just two: Absolutelly GREAT!!!.

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  4. To be honest, I wasn't a fan of eye-stalker beholder and was hoping that wouldn't make it into Massive Darkness. This thing though... it is something else altogether. Way to take a classic concept and turn it up to something that nods to the classic but becomes something altogether more impressive and iconic. Keep up the good work, and I'll keep an eye on your blog to see what other figures I need to invest in to get more.

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    1. I do like to subvert people expectations when given the chance, sometimes it works and others...

      Thank you for the compliment!

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  5. Awesome sculping ;) Would realy love to see a Tutorial from you how you create those awesome miniatures. And what tools and stuff you use. Probably a few shots from creating a miniature where great too.

    Greetings from Germany

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    1. Hello and thank you!
      I've got something I've been meaning to post and it's a bit of a step-by-step so maybe that might answer some questions.

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  6. That would be awesome. Can't wait to see your step-by-step Pictures ;)

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  7. I loved this concept since the beginning, I've received my pledge today and just start painting it to use it in MD as with my tyranids, my boy says its going to be our alpha zoantrope, thank you and great work!

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    1. That's awesome! Glad you guys are having fun with it, hopefully he will harvest much biomass.

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