Cookie Concept Art: The Creature

Hello and Welcome to the series of Cookie Concept Art: The Creature done by Tim Von Rueden.
This tutorial is the first in depth look at an in house concept art piece that was done for an upcoming Blender
training series. Tim takes us through his entire process from the initial sketching to the final rendered piece.
Below is a look at the different stages and progress that this creature went through
1. Silhouettes.
There are are number of different ways to start a piece and how to go about it. When I start concepting a piece out I
like to begin with simple black and white silhouettes with a color gradient to give it some color. Instead of using
purely black I use the white areas to add value and give the object more shape. The two creatures that have a green
dot next to them were the ones that we decided to develop on more.


2. Refining.
Next we looked at the sketches and chose three that stood out as pieces that could be rendered on. These were the
three that I spent around 15 minutes on each.

3. Detailing a Single concept.
We each felt that the green creature stood out as being the strongest to build upon. It was now time to start figuring
out how this creature functions, what is his/her story. How can we bring this creature to life. I looked into the
anatomy structures of a frog, turtle, and a human to create a structure that seemed believable.
Then I sketched out a bunch of different poses and angles that I could use for the final render of the concept.


4. Rendering
This is the longest part of the conception process. I went through many different variations and tried new things as I
was developing this creature. Receiving constant feedback was very helpful in giving me direction to work with.


After hours of working out the concept, I was ready to give it a proper setting to be placed in.
5. Background
Backgrounds are new to me since I normally place my characters in a simple gray textured background. So for this
one I referenced swamp pictures and well as trying out different color schemes and in the end I went with a color
that help contrast the green hue in the creatures skin.

6. Final Concept Art The Creature

Thanks for viewing Let me know what you guys think in the comment section below!
In this Cookie Concept Art post, we go through the creation of our Unity Cookies mascot, Unit-E 3D.
This character is also a complete citizen tutorial series featured here: Unit-E 3D Step by Step tutorial series.

When presented with the new Unity Cookie site, a new mascot was brought up for discussion. This character was to
be similar in proportions to our Blender Cookie mascot, Baker, except in a robotic form. So when I was given this task
I immediately had a few ideas I wanted to run with. The first decision was either to make the robot in a sleek clean
style or more of a beat up rusting style. We decided a cleaner type version would work better. The two references
that came to mind were Clank, from the Ratchet and Clank games and Eve, from Disney/Pixars Wall-E.
1. Initial Sketching
Below are the first sketches I drew down for the proportions and feeling of the character.

2. Detailing
After deciding to continue with the second sketch I went ahead and starting rendering the sketch out by first laying
down the base colors and adding some simple value. Since the outside material of the robot is a cleaner metal
polish, the lighting was easier to lay in because of how condensed the light source would look on specific points on
the robot. The eyes were fun to create and with the addition of the orange, it gave a focus on the color play going on
with the overall blue base of the robot.

3. Polishing and Add ons
The next step was adding in additional colors throughout to help break up the monotony and to feel the light source
that was being emitted from the different sections of the body. Once the robots initial concept was finalized, we got
to have some fun designing additional parts for the robot and the different attachments that could be added. To
differentiate the robots we had the idea of identifying them by the bold strips of color that were layer right on top.

4. Background
The final steps were the background, and how much wear and tear to put on the robot. At first I went with a brown
and orange background to contrast the overall color of the robot but it was too plain and after trying a few other
colors it was blue that stood out the most. It was bright and bold and added the high contrast between the orange
glows that flowed throughout the concept. The robot also felt too clean and cartoonish looking, to fix that I added in
a bunch of different scratch marks and dirty patches to add in that sense of realism. This was a tough decision to
make. Both versions I thought worked so well but in the end, we went with the worn down one.

5. The Final Concept Piece: Unit-E 3D
After a few months of leaving the Robot concept in the folder and ready to post, I went ahead and opened it and
added a few more detail working throughout. I added the worn down orange stripes that were taken off and some
more wear and tear but with using color.

If you wanna run around with him in Unity or check out the 3D model, check t hem out below!
Citizen Resource: Complete Robot Character Vonn-901 V1 By Jonathan Williamson

Robot Series Part 01 Movement by Patrick Boelens

Thanks for checki ng out this series with our very own Unity mascot, Unit -E 3D. Any questions or
comments? Leave them in the section below!