The alien in Android's latest "Nerd Kingdom" inspired me to start an alien image.

Starting with some crappy preliminary concept drawings to find the alien within...







I finally came up with this guy crawling out of his wrecked craft.



... plus a crappy environment sketch to get that started



Hopefully I can turn this into some measure of the work that inspired it

Heh! I'm glad my work gave you inspiration, Mr. BD!

About your sketches: I didn't understand what was going on in the last pic you posted but I think this isn't so important right now.

I really like the musculature you created for the alien. Very powerful and menacing. The like-an-insect eyes always bring that special feeling of horror and strangeness. Very good indeed!

Do you really need to show him as a bad guy?

Let's see the next phase!

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Yeah, it's kind of light... It's a rectangular craft crashed on a dirt and rock planetoid of some kind. It's was just a quick sketch to lay out my idea for the sky and environment.

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Thanks! I was going for an anthropomorphic weird alien-ness. More weird than horrific, but that reaction is good.

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I really don't see him as a bad guy. I see him more as crash victim making his way out of the vehicle. I am glad that you are having a disturbed reaction to him though. Aliens should make you feel uncomfortable.


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Hopefully I can doe some decent ship designs during lunch today.

Pretty cool alien.

And after all, his/her/it's facial expression could indicate extreme joy and happiness in his/her/it's culture. Or, he/she/it could be about to sneeze... or maybe throw up (if he/she/it landed in New Jersey, for example)...

Good stuff, I love the design.

Nice concept. I like it. Hope we get to see more.

Here are my doodle concepts for the crashed ship. At first I was thinking a rectangular "skyscraper" like ship, but it seemd a little too boring. So I went doodle crazy. Here is the main concepts I played with.



This is where I am leaning presently.

I like the sketch in the middle row, at the end on the right. To me, it seems to match your alien the most. Maybe it's a little off, but this is just concept so far. I think the final product will look awesome, even if a little gross.

Nice, that's cool. I like the wispy effect in the sky.
Maybe the ship should be at a less severe angle. It doesn't look far enough in to stay upright like that.
Looks good for 'rough'.

Starting to work over my alien buddy a little. I've added the base tones to start the shading. Also broke his brain and brain sack out onto their own layers.

This is the the base I'll be using for the planetoid the alien crashed on. I wanted to jam in a ton of detail to start off with, and needed it to be a sphere for some of the atmosphere effects I want to try out.

Baby alien steps continue:

I rotated the planetoid until I found the horizon that appealed to me the most and compressed the height to push the perspective close to the horizontal of the scene I am producing. Then I slapped a quick gray tone of the ship together and crashed it on the the 'toid.

Here's a sort of PS sketch of the compound eye... still working out the technique

Still going...

I didn't much like the first version so I retackled the eye. This time I think I've improved the basic pattern. Seems like a better start. I think ultimately it's going to be a little wet and gooey.

I really prefer the bumpy eye texture, it goes well with the visible brain texture. This picture is fun to see evolve and become polished.

I think the second eye will work better. The rest of your alien dude looks gushy and malformed, almost like it could just fall off at any second. The first eye looks too...pretty to fit. The second looks like a bunch of grapes. Needs a little work though, the edge spheres are falling off (but you already knew that didn't you? ).

and so it begins...



details, details, details...

Ah! Intriguing steps, Mr. BD!
We really understand how your brain works.

So far, this pic is getting better and better!