Insectoid Character Design

The task given to us, a couple weeks back, was to come up with an "imaginative concept" for an insect-ish character which could be used to discuss possible art directions in some hypothetical future game. We needed to: compile a moodboard, do some sketches, work up further your three favorite sketches, do a front and left blueprint style view of your chosen character design and then a final three-quarter view piece of your final design. With two weeks to work on it this was our most demanding piece of concept work yet. So without further ado, moodboard:

With the moodboard to help me I got on with some sketches in my sketch book.

After scribbling down a few sketches I was quite clear to me which ones were my favorites. So it was off to Photoshop to see if I could work the concepts further.

God bless layer via copy (my preferred way of producing symmetry in a piece). .

Front and profile mugshot(ish) style pics as required. Getting everything in line was a pain.( Note presence of smaller abdominal claws which were subsequently dropped from the design as I felt that they didn't and much to the creature and just got lost in the thorax detailing.) 

Although I was fond of them all, ever since I did a sketch of 'im in my sketchbook there has always been a special place in my heart for "Super Mantis" (called so because of his size, not as an indication of any super powerful aspects).

I used a leather texture on his shelly part.I don't think it looks half bad really.

The final picture. I must admit that drawing this (not so) little fella was a complete and utter nightmare. Trying to get his thorax and shell look right in a three-quarter view was eye-gougingly

stressful but after a while I finally got what I was looking for. I'm quite happy with how the colouring came out but wish that perhaps I could have made i a little more interesting, replacing the need for black outlines with shade and tone. But, alas, I was quite frankly losing the will to live with this piece after trying to get the line work to look right and am still rather happy with the out come.