Phrog Character Design

I volunteered to help out with the 3D team's project involving alien wildlife, as I am interested in creature design (more so than character design sometimes). I asked about the key features of the creature and got a pretty detailed list of characteristics:

• a land creature with aquatic features (frog, toad and deep-sea angler fish),
• a bright light source that's used as bait,
• is going to be modelled and rigged as a 3D character. 

Initial sketches to test mixing different features of different aquatic creatures

After my initial sketches and a bit of back and forth, we narrowed down its features to a frog-like creature with a glowing uvula and translucent belly (named the lava lamp belly because of the "organs" you can see through it). I experimented with a few shapes and colour to test out the different moods the Phrog could convey while remaining grounded in reality (or at least an alien reality?)

Shape and colour test (natural on the left, alien on the right)

Texture and details tests

In the end, we went with this design. Since it was going to be modelled and rigged in 3D I made a turnaround with breakdowns of different parts:

What went well:

• Basing the design on real creatures helped make it believable,
• Frequent communication with the 3D team made this process quick and efficient,
• Remembering that this design was going to be used to model in 3D meant I showed a lot more details, like breakdowns, open mouth, stretched legs etc.

What could be improved:

• The features don't line up perfectly, due to perspective and human error, which is more noticeable when modelling it in 3D,
• Not knowing the exact details of the final story made it slightly difficult to design this creature with a motive (but the ambiguity might've helped make it a mysterious character?).