A Biomechanical Character - ZBrush Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games - page 351

Man in a Suit
In creature design, it is often important to avoid the man-in-a-suit look. Decades of monster movies have
created an audience familiarity with the look of a performer inside a rubber suit. There are proportional
points that cannot be easily changed, just like the proportions of the face are locked in even for prosthet-
ic makeup unless some digital alteration can take place. Many directors will stress they want a creature
design which obviously cannot be accomplished with a suit since it will best exploit the power of CGI
and create a creature the audience has most likely not encountered before. Some effective designs from
the past include Geiger's Alien, Pumpkinhead, and more recently Wink from Hellboy 2 , the Pale Man
and the Faun from Pan's Labyrinth as well as many of the robots from the film A.I. Part of the reason
these are so successful is because the artists, designer, and director are experienced creature designers
and know what visual cues create the man-in-a-suit look. Through clever design, these conventions were
broken and exploited to make memorable characters. They understand what the audience expects and
then try to confound those expectations.
Refine the Torso Details
When creating the mechanical details of the torso, we will take advantage of the Trim Dynamic brush, the
Planar brush, and the Polish brush. Some basic planes are created using the Trim Dynamic brush. The Trim
Dynamic brush allows you to polish and flatten the surface along a curved path. This helps create machined
surfaces like car bodies and other semi-organic machined surfaces. Use this brush to polish the curves of