Here we catch a glimpse at a Thornclaw Warrior roaming through its home forest alongside their frequently tamed companion. The clan uses these fierce predators as a means to pull their formidable chariots in battle and have tamed them to fight alongside their clan in the battlefield.
The first step of this process was coming up with the design of the chariot that this character would be using. I wanted to continue with the theme of having the vines & thorns be a natural part of the construction to bolster and work together with the visual language of the character. Several chariot silhouette designs were made and selected.
The final iteration of the chosen chariot.
The next step of the process was to determine what type of creature would be pulling the chariot. Traditionally humans have used horses to pull their chariots, however I wanted to explore that concept further and create an alien feeling creature that serves the same purpose. The size, composition and body language of the creature was important so several variations were explored.
Here we can see the final design of the creature, once again, playing with the concept of being a part of the nature they are in with how moss, foliage and thorns are growing out of the body. The aim here is to continue the visual language initially developed by the Character Design and inject it into our creature here, portraying that they have gone through a similar evolution and live in a similar environment. I wanted this creature to look formidable and intimidating to highlight how powerful our characters must be to have tamed such beasts for their own use.
The final step of the process was to put it all together. The final iterations of each component was posed and composed specifically to be able to fit together like we see here. After posing the 3 different elements together now the only thing left was to make them fit in to the world around them.