My second professional sculpt! the Lurker Above was a real challenge for me from a conceptual standpoint - how do I make a flying wall interesting?
The basic body shape was easy enough as it has been describes as being manta ray shaped since its initial appearance and the silhouette of a manta ray is easy to find. This bad boy is pretty big, as went with the dimensions given in the tome of horrors pretty closely and I wanted to make it large enough to envelop a 28mm sized hero with ease (it is mounted on a 50mm base). I knew I needed to make the sculpt dynamic in order to keep it interesting because of its basic physiology, so I settled on an approach similar to my cloaker sculpt. I tried to give it the impression that it was swooping down from above and I included some subtle tricks to increase the sense of motion in addition to a descending angle: upturned wing tips, a slight twist to the body, and a trailing tail. I even used the counter angle of the "stand" itself to help reinforce an illusion of motion (though that idea didn't work as well as I would have liked - it needed to join farther back on the wing).
With the structure complete the belly texture was the obvious place to start and I stuck pretty close to the concept art from The Tome:
I modified the scale pattern slightly to better fit the body shape I had and reduced the size of the scales, but other than that it is a close approximation. the mouth, similarly, was a simple extension of the concept art.
The eyes, on the other hand, didn't translate so well. I had tried sculpting them several times but the inward turned cephalic lobe gave it a more peaceful/pouty demeanor and the eyes themselves were not positioned well for a "sit and wait" predator. I decided on a more classic inspiration:
Bug eyes! I didn't want to abandon adornment on the eyes, though, and I had learned an important lesson while sculpting the froghemoth: the facial features of a monster convey a sense of emotion and it is important to embrace the opportunity to do so, even if it means sacrificing "realism" or concept. In the case of the froghemoth the curvature of the mouth was a crucial turning point (happy vs grumpy) and here I wanted "sinister." Any kid who has watched cartoons knows that sinister = sharp upward curved eyebrows. after that realization the idea quickly fell in to place; I chose to invert the cephalic lobe to create a structure that was reminiscent of pointy eyebrows! that definitely gave him the evil look he needed.
The back of the lurker above was troubling because it has never been portrayed in art. To solve that problem I tapped my experience as a biologist and asked myself what would be up there. The clear answer was "something to attach to the ceiling with," which gave me two choices, suckers or spines. I had decided against the spines on the leading edge of the wing previously because my mockups indicated a compositional balance issue, so I figured I'd reintroduce them. I positioned 100+ retractable-type spines in key areas along the edge of the wing and along the spinal column and at the periphery of the face, places where I thought support for suspension would be important. The striation pattern was an extension of this idea and became a little more developed as the final details were being added. in the head area they eventually became somewhat geometric in shape, maybe I was watching a bit to much Tron in the wee hours of the morning when I sculpt. I like the overall effect as they give the impression of some sort of anatomy important to the spines, and more importantly, they will be interesting to paint.
and there you have it, another sculpt of a huge sized monster! next up on the sculpting block is a pair of pterodactyl men for "The Forge of Ice," a small Alaska based miniatures company.
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