Kappa Final Process

I revisited the Kappa, creating a final piece to represent them as a deadly lake monster, as was in the Japanese myth.

 

A detail in the myth that should not be overlooked is the fact they are adept sumo wrestlers and haul unsuspecting people into the water, as well as animals, making them deadly killers. To accommodate for this,, I opted to use a low stance that make it appear the Kappa the ready to strike.

Different to how I worked on the Minotaur, I created a shadow map and a colour map to reduce the drawing time. The downside is that it is likely to lose saturation or colour to a higher degree since the shadow map is set to multiply.

After combining the colour map, the stance and physical makeup of the creature is much clearer, showing muscle definition, the turtleshell, bill, and the head sink. Only colour correction and adding subtle details were needed to finish this.


The Kappa would appear to be assassin like, which is the kind of stance and feeling I was aiming for. What need to follow is the addition of the Japanese rivers, or perhaps the swamps which should give the creature the correct environmental feeling that it originates from.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hydras, their features, and their similarities to Dragons

Image
Hydra, Dark Souls. [Video Game], From Software.   The hydra is a similar mythical creature to the dragon in terms of the general head structure. It originates from the myth in which a nine-headed serpent haunted the swamps of Lerna during ancient Greece, and was capable of spawning two more heads from those decapitated. Heracles was said to have destroyed the creature with help from Iolaus. When it comes to video games, most of the hydra's aspects are the same when it comes to textures, builds and body features. The differences are the number of heads that it has, the fact that it is never airborne, and that the head type can be slightly different. Typically, the features between hydras and dragons bear obvious similarities. The immediate difference is the structure of the creature - hydras have more heads than one, and also lack the wings. In many games, they are bound to the spot and found in water, so it is sometimes unclear as to what is beneath the creature. ...
Read more

Investigating the Japanese Kappa in illustration

Image
Suiko Koryaku, (1836) Koga Toan The Kappa of Japanese folklore are human-like water imp creatures that are said to have the same height as a child and are very proficient in sumo wrestling. They were also said to haunt inhabit rivers, ponds and lakes, and were also responsible for drowning horses and children. In supernatural mythology, they are categorised as one of many yokai spirits and are essentially a amphibious hybrid of human and turtle with webbed feet.  The Kappa in modern illustrated media Kappas are often illustrated as being a anthropomorphed fusion of a human and a turtle, having a shell on its back and a beak. Many companies or artists who illustrate the mythical creature often make a human-like, and sometimes cartoonistic impression of the kappa. Yokai Watch Faux Kappa, Yokai Watch. [Animated Series]   Level-5. Level-5 takes a cartoonistic approach tailored towards that of anime and manga audiences. The kappa is simplified to its basic...
Read more

Picturing the many parts of the Dragon

Image
The dragon's body parts are borrowed from many different animals in the world. As such, I found it best to focus on different segments at a time to understand the anatomy of the dragons.   Early sketches involved trying to recreate the correct anatomical build of the dragon, which included the upper body and the appendages. Drawing nodes is important, as it allows me to draw in the bulk of the body parts more easily. The main body of the dragon seems much harder to replicate.   The most complex areas were parts involving scaled patterns. These tend to have jagged shapes and are well crowded. These borrow from either turtle skin which is more pointy, or snakeskin which is flatter and glossier. Due to my experience with games and media, pointy dragon skin is far more familiar to me since it is more common, so my practices reflect textures that are derived from turtles. Pentadactyls, being the wings, are also a challenge to draw accurately. I found drawing the wire m...
Read more