Blastosie Redesign

Over at CGhub.com, they have a few weekly challenges going on, one of which is Creature Planets, which is moderated by a friend of mine from CCA, Brynn Metheney. I hadn't gotten around to doing a CGHub challenge until last week, when the topic was Pokemon redesign. I was never a huge fan of Pokemon, but I played the original Gameboy game more than zero, and watched the show... a couple of times.... Fine, I can name like fifty Pokemon, easy. Happy?

I decided to go for a gritty reboot of my favorite, old-school Pokemon, Blastoise.





I found some reference photos of turtles and tortoises, and did three quick sketches.



I decided to try and keep Blastoise's basic proportions the same, but make the textures as realistic as possible. I also wanted him to look like a large animal who fought other large animals for a living: Scarred and beat-up and more than a little tired.

So onto the final sketch:



And the final image:





All in all, I had a great time doing this piece, and I sort of really want to do Venusaur and Charizard next. We'll see.