How does one design an alien race like the Zerg from Starcraft?
The Zerg fascinated me ever since I started playing Starcraft years ago, their organic design inspires me today to create my own nightmarish race of evolving creatures.
I've looked at concept art and I am wondering how did Blizzard create a race that varies so much individually, yet remains part of a whole?
I've looked at concept art and I am wondering how did Blizzard create a race that varies so much individually, yet remains part of a whole?
Comments
It doesn't mean Blizzard didn't put tons of fantastic artists to work to help visualise The Zerg in an awesome style, but the hive-minded concept and general visual style of the creatures was already there thanks to Warhammer.
I found this:
kotaku.com/5929161/how-warcraft-was-almost-a-warhammer-game-and-how-that-saved-wow
So, The Zerg aren't as original as I thought they were:P - warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Tyranids
And no not to take anything away from Blizzard, they do fantastic design, even if their universe is very derivative. What isn't these days though? :)
The Protoss were a lot like the Eldars also from 40k, but I think they broke further away from the Eldars than the Zergs from Tyranids.
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But then, back to the original question of "How do companies design amazing concepts like this"... Is there any answer other than work a lot on it and try different variations until something seems cool? And have a strong art/creative director or direction team that holds a strong vision? I'm interested in what everyone thinks of a question like this, because I can't really see any magical answer other than "hard work and lots of good people", which seems un-magical, but true.
For example, let's suppose you want to create an arachnid race.
- Some spiders have amazing jumping ability.
- Some are massive and rely on brute force.
- Some have up to 7 web glands for rapidly wrapping up pray.
- They can use their silk to fly in the air, and make a bubble to breath under water.
- They hear by feeling air vibrations through their feet and triangulating the origin.
- Some are poisons but frail, others use camouflage, and some spin a sticky ball of goo at the end of a web to catch prey.
- The Pea Aphid can photosynthesise, the Parasitic Wasp can survive 180 000 rads.
There are so many fascinating insects out there that you could use to extrapolate fantasy creatures from.
The rest is down to good design, making sure the individual creatures adhere to an overall theme you've set for their race. But the inspiration can come from anywhere, so the more types of media you expose yourself to, the better designer you will be.
(I actually main Zerg because I love their design so much, despite them being one of the hardest races to play. The creep spreading over the stage feels like I'm consuming the stage itself ^w^)
I also found this:
creativebloq.com/3d/how-design-better-creatures-41411337
Creature design video by Feng Zhu.
https://youtu.be/9FGCClodLUE
Think of a fly. Everything else is bigger and stronger and far away. Everything tries to kill it. So it is small and can fly really fast. It needs to be able to eat almost anything and eat it fast... so instead of biting and chewing it just squirts acid onto soft tissue and slurps it up. Because nothing can catch it... it has a very soft squishy body and because it never carries anything it has tiny weak legs that are just long enough to clean its lArge eyes that allow it to observe surroundings.
Everything about the fly is a result of the premise it needs to survive.
Same goes for jellyfish and ants and giraffes etc.
So maybe try that approach. Premise before design?