the art of colo colo

8/17/2019 The Art Of Colo Colo

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ContentsIntroduction and Influences................................................................................ 1Initial Ideas..........................................................................................................3Concept Designs................................................................................................ 6Production Design.............................................................................................. 13

Orthographics...................................................................................................... 14Wireframe............................................................................................................ 15Maps.................................................................................................................... 18Render Tests...................................................................................................... 23Final Outcome.................................................................................................... 25Credit................................................................................................................... 27


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Colo Colo is a creature from South American folklore. Originating from the native cultures of southern Chileand Argentina, Colo Colo is a vampiric creature that takes nest in peoples’ homes and feeds on the salivaof the residents as they sleep: draining them of energy, making them susceptible to disease and, with time,potentially killing them. The only way it is said to remove its presence is an exorcism by a local shaman.

Introduction and Infuences

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The Mapuche, the South American culture the myth of Colo Coo originates, describe the creature as vampiricin nature, with traits shared by rats and roosters with a long tongue for sipping up saliva from the victim’s mouth.The use of these creatures was one of the influences of making the adapted design a mix of cute and creepy.

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Initical Ideas

At the beginning of the project, I took the idea

of a rat with the features of a chicken and workedon numerous ideas around this idea, blending ratand chicken features in order to avoid the trap ofsomething that looked llike a taxidermied fake.

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Initial sketches were followed by blackouts,experimenting with basic shapes and a forayinto inkwork. What developed alternated be-

tween a feathered, beaked rat and a chickenwith a ratlike tail and tiny arms. These sketch-es formed the basis of the later designs, evenwhen the design itself took a lateral direction

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While the original ideareached an advanced stage,as can be seen in laterchapters, it did not feel quiteorganic enough. It still feltlike a taxidermist’s fabrica-

tion. So after some discus-sion the decision was madeto look for new influences,looking at South America,the Andes region to try andmake sense of the myth. Itwas at this point that thesense of ‘adaptation’ tookthe next step, with the rat

and chicken influences be-coming imprints isntead of

key qualities.

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Concept Designs

The project development can theoretically be divided into two phases that can be called the Chimera andAggregate stage. Chimera was when Colo Colo was designed as a hybrid of rat and rooster features, while

still strongly resembling the two. Aggregate was when instead of looking at the creature as a mash of twoanimals, the involved animals were used as ways to explain what this creature looked like. Both stages

reached a near-complete point, which is why they are both compiled in this chapter.

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It was through Chimera that a better understanding of the creature’sanatomy came about. The skeleton‘s structure was investigated inorder to better understand how the creature would move, stand andinteract, how it would balance itself. Investigating the skeleton also

assistedi n skin and muscle layout.


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This mission to un-derstand the way ColoColo moved and stood,and the way rat andchicken features wouldfit into the creature cul-minated with a study ofrat and chicken skullsthat in turn culminat-ed with a hybrid blend

skull. The ink blots werethe basis of the crest.While Chimera was not

the final outcome, theideas formed were cru-cial during the Aggre-

gate stage.


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The Aggregate stage wasmarked by a crucial de-cision: Was the creaturefrom the Chimera stageworking? Ultimately itwas decided, no it wasn’t.

Despite best efforts, thedesign did not evolve or

change much. Aggregate took someof the ideas that wereformed during Chimera,and took a new artisticdirection, taking inspira-tion from basilisk lizards.

The creature took on anoverall more reptillian ap-pearance as a result.


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This was the direction that defined the project. A more distinct design than in the Chimera stagecame about, which was taken on into the 3D mdoel.


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12

In terms of colour direction, the keyword was ‘undead’. Colo Colo is described as a creature of undeath,so a number of skin tints were experimented with including frozen, rotten, decayed, blood-pooled and so on,mostly various colours of decay. The colour of the eye was key as it had to compliment the skin tone andlook threatening. This was not a natural creature described, but the important consideration was it had to look

like it could be stumbled upon and not be treated as some hallucination.


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Production Design

The final design was largely influenced with how trapped blood changes the colour of skin to a dark red-dish-purple tone when the vein feeding the area is constricted. But near the feet was influenced by how dead

flesh skin can blacken in extremities like fingers.


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Orthographics

As Colo Colo was largely symmetrical, the main angles used during design were the front, side and top, therest could be reasonably assumed as the model developed.


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Wireframe


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Maps

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The project model primarily consists of a single contiguous model, so for modeling the ideal would have beenone texture map. Close up oppertunities however make this a little more difficult. So what has been done is

the creation of two 4k textures that are combined together into one shading network.


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These two normal maps primarily give depth and texture to the surface of the skin. As much of the model’sgeometry is responsible for the larger bumps and crevices.

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Specular Maps were created from monochrome texture maps. Like the normal maps, they came out with moresubtlety when rendering was switched to two UVs going though one node.


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What necessitated the use of two UV maps was the complexity on one surface. To get a good amount of detaila large map was needed, but too large and there would have been an overload from the attempt to render.Initially hosting two different shading netowrks, a single shading network made easy coexistance of these two

more manageable.


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Two textures were created for the eye due to the use of a milashader, which has a habit of dulling the textures it uses, which

required the the development of a much brighter eye texture.

The skin was made using images of skin found online that func-tion as a base texture. These were combined and blended togeth-er to create a texture that could be repeated over a large area.

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Render Testing

Extensive testing with textures was per-

formed as the rendering process went along.As it was skin that was being mimicked, qual-ity and believability was important, and thenature of the specific shader used made itdifficult to gauge what was going on in theworkspace. So performing quick render tests

were vital for quality control.

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Despite the texture complexity, test renders werefairly rapid, rendering out the whole body rarelytook more than a minute while more detailed are-

as could take 1-3 minutes.

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Final Outcome

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Credit

Construction of the skin was made possible using a foundation of texturesprovided by:

Caleb Kimbrough of FlikrWoodpuncher of Pixabay

The music accompanying the animations was composed by:GentlythgowSpeedenzaSuonho

Their music is available at Freesound.org

Project Duration: 4th January - 28th April 2016

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the art of colo colo

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