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Things You Were Too Afraid to Ask: Laurel 'Tully' Austin
From the colorful depths of our art department comes Laurel 'Tully' Austin, the shining star in this week's episode of our on-going series of staff questionnaires. Laurel is a Concept Artist here at Splash Damage and helps shape the artistic vision for our environments, characters, equipment, and the like, and her art helps guide and inspire the rest of the development team. Not content spending the whole day creating video game worlds at the office, Laurel often spends her spare time building what people from the '90s might refer to as totally rad maquettes (think smallish statues) of dinosaurs, demons, and whatever else tickles her fancy at the time.
To find out more about Laurel's work, how she ended up here at Splash Damage, and her after-work demon creation extravaganzas, read her full interview in her profile. Don't forget to surf over to our newly established outpost on Flickr where you can find all kinds of photos of Laurel's various creations!
Comments
"OMG!!!111 ARE THOSE SCULPTURES FROM THE NEW GAME!?!?!??!"
Nope! As stated these are Laurel's spare time creations, but boy are they still awesome
(including tapirs)
maybe maybe?
maybe maybe?
I would also be lying if I said that the idea of Dino Wars didn't sound ultra cool.
your art is most awesome!
and thanks for the details on vlad, i've always wondered how that stuff is being made
i've always wondered why the evil stuff looks ugly and has lots of teeth, ie everyone seems to create a monster. i wonder how you could create evil which looks beautiful without over-exaggerated teeth n such. if you have sth of that kind, please share
your art is most awesome!
and thanks for the details on vlad, i've always wondered how that stuff is being made
i've always wondered why the evil stuff looks ugly and has lots of teeth, ie everyone seems to create a monster. i wonder how you could create evil which looks beautiful without over-exaggerated teeth n such. if you have sth of that kind, please share
I can try to answer your question as best I know how... why ugly things tend to look evil to us has everything to do with our own psychology. Exactly why our brains work on this subject as they do isn't well-understood (particularly by me!) but I think it's uncontroversial to say that we're predisposed to think well of attractive people/things and are more likely to be repelled by what's unattractive. It only makes sense when designing something with a specific goal in mind to use types of features we're most likely to identify with "good" on a good character, and bad on an evil character.
With the teeth/horns/claws thing, it makes sense that we'd put these things on a bestial monster since it plays on very deeply ingrained fears of large carnivorous rampaging creatures (death and pain and stuff). When you make a big monster with nasty teeth, you're making a caricature that plays on these base tendencies, creating it for the purpose of evoking an emotion -- fear, disgust, etc.
Beautiful evil is a more tricky subject, as it's less down-and-dirty primal fear and more about fears of deceit. Beautiful evil is more psychologically uncomfortable to us than standard ugly evil because it both attracts *and* repells us. It lures us in, tricks us and then when we think we've found something great it disembowels us. The ugly monster with giant teeth just wants to attack you and rip you to pieces -- he's pretty out in the open about his intentions. There's something creepier about being tricked. Succubi and that sort of thing generally fill this niche pretty well, but if we're talking about *monsters* and not about humanoid things, it gets more difficult.
When you're making a monster, you have to think about its purpose and what reaction you want to create in the viewer. A beautiful creature is often more seen as a benign character (think unicorns and them), but there are ways of going about making something equally beautiful evil. It would probably mostly be subtleties of the face -- blank, inexpressive eyes come to mind -- but it has to have a sense of danger about it, or why be afraid of it? The viewer has to know it could do some damage -- the usual way of doing that would be to give hints of the weapons it has available to it.
I guess the closest thing I have in my work to this would be a the concept for an Adaro I did a while back. That's a sort of shark man from pacific island mythology, if memory serves. Though I admit he does have big claws, and I dunno if he currently reads as strictly *evil* there (I would think he's a bit morally ambiguous).
Interesting subject, though
i guess with "beautiful" evil you need also a background story and sound. one related thing that comes to my mind are the babies in doom 3.
I think little girls can make very scary evil characters too... Think of The Shining, Bioshock, The Ring... Resident Evil (the computer)?
my girls use it on me to great effect
Would you happen to be able to point me to some tutorials and such for making models such as that. Like what kind of materials and supplies are required, and the basics, etc. I always wanted to try my hand at sculpturing.
89blitz: Aww... Rich(who took the photo) asked me to go for rage. I'm not a very good actor
Joe999: Hehe, I forgot that one. Sphinx counts too then
Obsidian: At the moment I'm the only Canadian! It's a travesty to be sure... a truly major oversight. We need at least four or five more to be working at optimum efficiency (and maple-iciousness). This tutorial on Conceptart.org is where I got the vast majority of my information on making them. It's pretty simle and sculpey's a very forgiving material that's easy to get used to. I personally do a few things differently--mainly where it comes to making bases) but only out of personal preference and the materials I have available to me.
Cheers, guys