I’m very excited to present our second beast feature from Rise to Omniscience. If you weren’t aware, we have an amazing artist, Daniel Simon, who’s been working on character and beast art for RTO. The last time, we covered the creation of the Ice-Bristle Wolf. If you haven’t seen it already, then you can check it out here. Now, please join us as we take a deep dive at the creation of the Sonic-Cerberus Chicken!

Some of you may remember the Sonic-Cerberus Chicken from Starbreak, as it was the first creature that Morgan got to try his signature “Starbreak” move on. It's a chicken approximately 7 feet tall, with three heads. Each head is a different color, and that color carries down the rest of its body, giving it a three-toned appearance. The left head is black, the middle one is light tan and the left head is deep red. It's feet are bright yellow and have a set of wickedly curved claws. It also has a smattering of scales throughout it's feathers, and they extend in a line from their crests to their beaks, providing a sort of crude armor for their heads.

As you can imagine, there is zero reference for a three-headed chicken in the real world, so it’s in cases like this where an artist really has to use to their imagination and creative vision. Daniel started off with a preliminary sketch that looked like this:

Even the preliminary sketch for this beast took a bit of time, as figuring out the positioning of the heads, as well as the effect it would have on the proportions of the body, was quite time-consuming. After this sketch was made, Daniel changed up the pose a bit, to make it look more sinister and aggressive.

I really liked the positioning of the heads in this one, it gave the chicken an almost prehistoric vibe. It sort of reminded me of a dinosaur. (Which is accurate as modern birds are their closest relatives.)

Once we settled on this pose, the lines were drawn on more finely, and the line-work of the chicken became more prominent.

After the lines were completed, Daniel moved on to coloring. He had to play around a bit with different variations of color to get one that looked the best.

Daniel and I decided that although we did like this look, it would look better if there was some variations in the color of the wings. It would provide some much needed contrast.

By changing up the colors of the feathers, it gave it a more natural, chicken-like look. After we settled on this pattern, Daniel made a background, and added some finer details and shading work.

As you can see, Daniel colored in the scales, as well as adding some more shadows and texture.

He then added highlights and shadows to the scales of the chicken. He also played around with the coloring of the wings, so one color bled into the next, to give it as much of a natural look as he could.

The coloring was nearly complete but Daniel decided to change the color of the underside of the left wing from red to yellow. This was done to provide more contrast, as the leftmost head was blending into the wing too much and was becoming lost.

After this change was made, Daniel sent us the final version of the Sonic-Cerberus Chicken!

In this final piece, Daniel changed up the color of the eyes, added some effects, and tightened up the lines and colors.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks deep dive look into the creation of the Sonic-Cerberus Chicken! Please stay tuned for the next one! If you enjoyed this post, please leave a like, comment, and share with your friends!