Octopoid Part II: Tentacle and Beak

Boy, that sounds like a horrible 'Sy-Fy original' movie.

I hope you guys didn't suffer too much from the last post's amazing cliffhanger ending!

And now, the exciting conclusion....

 

Okay, here we have me basically messing around with the clay, 'doodling' ideas for how to handle the cyber parts of the octopus.  At this point I was wondering if little brackets spanning across the left and right panels of his armor would be interesting.  You can also see me experimenting with vents and panel lines on the cyber parts.  Also note the skin; there is a spiky nature to certain octopi skin that I wanted to capture.

These two shots show how I extended out the funnel, as I suppose they are called.  The funnel is believed to have evolved from the  'foot' of a snail-like early mollusk.  I wanted to balance an interesting design with a functional Glyos joint.  The flatter holes above were more parallel to each other, and the flat area might have matched larger attachments better, but they just didn't look like or imply octopus funnels.  

I also debated keeping the face completely flesh around themouth joint.  I like that look with mouthparts fit into it, but I don't like it when it is just an empty hole.  I also thought (and this might be overthinking) that it made the anatomy 'wrong' and more like a foreign, Cthulhu character than an octopus, because an octopus wouldn't have any seam or lip between its eyes/face and the tentacles in front of that face.  Right or wrong, I decided to make a little mechanical element that frames the face/mouth hole, as you can see on the image of the finished head on the right.

It is also on a really cool black-with-red-core body I got from Marty at TGB Customs.

Here I'm messing around with a seawater-scuba device idea.  I figured he would need to supply himself with seawater as he roamed around on land.  Or, a high-tech beer-hat type device.  Notice there are details throughout these photos, like the double holes on the side of his head here, that are discarded.  The whole hose leading to a backpack idea was just too ambitious for the time and money involved here.  I played around with the idea of using shoes from another figure as backpack tanks, and it works pretty well.  A long hose option may be possible to add to this head later, but I think Marty is already stressed out enough with how complicated I made this particular head!

Here I considered making the little brackets on the top of the head into a solid piece connecting the sides of the octopus head armor.  I ultimately decided it was confusing to have the flesh of his face and the flesh of the back of his head separated by tech.  It made the visible section of the back of his head seem like a weird island, kind of like a bald spot that just seemed purposeless.  Typically a good design, particularly involving practical technology (as opposed to decorative or cultural or supernatural elements) needs to look logical and purposeful.  Although I'd say that rule is pretty loose with these fantasy heads, when compared to, say, the power loader in Aliens or the T-800 endoskeleton, which have hydraulics and structures, etc. that are much more concerned with being believable than these.  Really I am primarily making shapes that I think look 'cool' to me, with deep lines to match the Armorvor body and the Glyos world.

 Lots o' Fun.





By the way, the clay I use is called Casteline.





To get one of these guys, go to New York Comic Con!  They look great in the colors marty is making, like gleaming crystal candy.    He should be able to make more after the convention too, and you would get them here, just by leaving a message saying you want to  'add yourself to the octopus list', or by sending him an e-mail saying you want one.

Octopoid

Making of the Octo Head:  part 1

    This was my favorite animal as a kid -  the octopus.  They have goat eyes.  They have 3 hearts. (when I was 7 or something I made a cartoon of an octopus in love, and above his head was an arrow through 3 hearts.  Obviously I was a Far Side reader.)
   It is practically an alien, with color changing and texture changing skills, puzzle-solving skills, ink-squirting skills, squeezing-into-anything skills, water-jetting skills, nun-chuck skills, computer-hacking skills...Geez, it's like Napoleon Dynamite designed him, if Napoleon Dynamite was cooler than the Fonz.

 This one might actually have computer hacking skills, since he seems to have the most cybernetic elements of my heads so far, although that wasn't the idea early on.

 A kind of Cthulhu like tentacle mass was in my head, and Marty (TGB) had a beak idea, so I started thinking about having a swappable mouth part, fitting in a glyos hole.  This led to me making this octopus head WAY to complicated (partially out of respect for my favorite martian, and also to try to top the cybergator head)  My mental image of an octopus told me that their jet-orifices could make two more glyos holes that would fit the design logically.  I collected some reference images from the internet in a folder to use, as well as made some quick drawings based on the idea that they would be mechanical tubes.  Most of my designing happened in the clay on this one.

one impressive drawing. 

you'll also notice i have the goat-eye, the hyphen-pupil sculpted in at this point.  I decided people who wanted it could paint it on and people who like the blank possessed look could leave it off.

This beak was too small.     

 I wasn't sure how to make the beak, which is centered underneath the octopus, poke out of the face in a way that seemed natural.

                                                                     overcorrected, too big.

 gave up on beak, went back to tentacles.

WILL HE EVER GET THE BEAK RIGHT?

Find out next time, in 

OCTOPOID:  PART II 

 THE LEGEND CONTINUES

spoiler:  I make a middle sized one.

Outlandish Mini Figure Guys (O.M.F.G.) !

I had a last minute whim to submit something, here it is!  I just liked the silly pun too much.