Character Designs
A couple months ago, I backed a Kickstarter Project called Mystical Kingdom of Monsters. The project, in a nutshell, is basically a campaign setting that combines Dungeons & Dragons with Pokemon. Now, how could I not support this project. In one of the Rewards tiers, I pledged to design a creature to be available in the game. Once the project got its financial backing, I went around to creating the character.
I brainstormed on what creature to design as they can be similar to existing D&D monsters, or a completely original creature. Now, the current (4th)edition for D&D makes it difficult to use existing monsters based on their User License Agreement, so an original design was a must to do.
I had a think on the matter and decided to go to the well of previous creature designs and perhaps one monster I have developed a bunch of times over the years since that mythical character design lesson in Character Design Class was the Latin American Boogeyman, El Cuco. For those unfamiliar with the creature, it is a creature that kidnaps and/or eats children that parents use to scare kids into behaving that's name means "coconut".
For this version, I basically kept the elements I used from past versions while adding a few features to give this creature, which I have dubbed the "Cucalon", a more Pocket Monster feel, which I shall describe using the list form;
Retained Elements
- Froglike limbs
- Fiery coconut head
- Plantlike cloak
New elements
- Added Layered Flare elements to shins and forearms.
- Made more unified coconut facial details with added flame effects.
- Darkened the abdomen to split the body up more.
This drawing was done in pencil, then inked using a brush pen. I cleaned up my linework in Photoshop to prepare it for digital coloring. The end result is in the next panel.
The finished piece, up next, is the one I submitted to Kevin Glusing, the game's creator. I also, for the liberty of making this creature fit within the campaign setting, I made this a Construct creature that serves as bodyguards to mystics as they possess phasing and teleportation abilities with the dangerous talent of copying and using other mystics spells.