Underwater Creature

Moodboard:

Started looking at shelled underwater creatures as I thought it'd be interesting to make a armored creature, ended up with a lot of sea slugs as they have some interesting shapes and colours. Will try and combine these two making an armored sea slug.

Sketches:

Sketches of a seaslug, lobster, lionfish and isopod. Drew these using blocks of colour picked from my moodboard

WIP:

 

First WIP, forgot to take earlier ones stretching out the sphere. Made the sphere a more slug like shape, added antenna, a frill and started to add the shell.

 Second WIP of making the sea slug in Sculptris. Here I got the slug shape down and added more of a shell to its back using the draw tool in inverse to get the dips and the draw tool to give the shell a more 3D effect.

Finished the model, changed the material to a more suitable one with a different lighting point and then used this as the base for my final paintover.

Final:

Would of liked to add more to this, maybe some patterns and anemones/barnacles/seaweed/etc living on its back to give a sense of scale and detail. Was thinking about giving it some legs and/or claws to make the design a bit more interesting and make it more crustacean-like but in some ways I think it might of looked too weird and its better how it is.

I painted over the scultpris model and used adjustment layers to make the shadows and highlights stronger