Contents

Introduction and Influences................................................................................ 1

Initial Ideas.......................................................................................................... 3
Concept Designs................................................................................................ 6
Production Design.............................................................................................. 13
Orthographics...................................................................................................... 14
Wireframe............................................................................................................ 15
Maps.................................................................................................................... 18
Render Tests...................................................................................................... 23
Final Outcome.................................................................................................... 25
Credit................................................................................................................... 27

Introduction and Influences

Colo Colo is a creature from South American folklore. Originating from the native cultures of southern Chile
and Argentina, Colo Colo is a vampiric creature that takes nest in peoples homes and feeds on the saliva
of 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.

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

Initical Ideas
At the beginning of the project, I took the idea
of a rat with the features of a chicken and worked
on numerous ideas around this idea, blending rat
and chicken features in order to avoid the trap of
something that looked llike a taxidermied fake.

Initial sketches were followed by blackouts,

experimenting with basic shapes and a foray
into inkwork. What developed alternated between a feathered, beaked rat and a chicken
with a ratlike tail and tiny arms. These sketches formed the basis of the later designs, even
when the design itself took a lateral direction

While the original idea

reached an advanced stage,
as can be seen in later
chapters, it did not feel quite
organic enough. It still felt
like a taxidermists fabrication. So after some discussion the decision was made
to look for new influences,
looking at South America,
the Andes region to try and
make sense of the myth. It
was at this point that the
sense of adaptation took
the next step, with the rat
and chicken influences becoming imprints isntead of
key qualities.

Concept Designs
The project development can theoretically be divided into two phases that can be called the Chimera and
Aggregate 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 two
animals, 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.

It was through Chimera that a better understanding of the creatures

anatomy came about. The skeletons structure was investigated in
order to better understand how the creature would move, stand and
interact, how it would balance itself. Investigating the skeleton also
assistedi n skin and muscle layout.

This mission to understand the way Colo

Colo moved and stood,
and the way rat and
chicken features would
fit into the creature culminated with a study of
rat and chicken skulls
that in turn culminated with a hybrid blend
skull.
The ink blots were
the basis of the crest.
While Chimera was not
the final outcome, the
ideas formed were crucial during the Aggregate stage.

The Aggregate stage was

marked by a crucial decision: Was the creature
from the Chimera stage
working? Ultimately it
was decided, no it wasnt.
Despite best efforts, the
design did not evolve or
change much.
Aggregate took some
of the ideas that were
formed during Chimera,
and took a new artistic
direction, taking inspiration from basilisk lizards.
The creature took on an
overall more reptillian appearance as a result.

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

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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 and
look 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 reddish-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, the
rest could be reasonably assumed as the model developed.

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Wireframe

15

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Maps

The project model primarily consists of a single contiguous model, so for modeling the ideal would have been
one 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 models
geometry 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 more
subtlety 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 detail
a 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 mila
shader, 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 function as a base texture. These were combined and blended together to create a texture that could be repeated over a large area.

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Render Testing
Extensive testing with textures was performed as the rendering process went along.
As it was skin that was being mimicked, quality and believability was important, and the
nature of the specific shader used made it
difficult to gauge what was going on in the
workspace. So performing quick render tests
were vital for quality control.

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Despite the texture complexity, test renders were

fairly rapid, rendering out the whole body rarely
took more than a minute while more detailed areas 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 textures
provided by:
Caleb Kimbrough of Flikr
Woodpuncher of Pixabay
The music accompanying the animations was composed by:
Gentlythgow
Speedenza
Suonho
Their music is available at Freesound.org
Project Duration: 4th January - 28th April 2016

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