King Kaw

sketchfab

I wanted to create a 3D model of one of my favorite designs from an 8-bit game demo I worked on, King Kaw. It's a colossal parrot monster that has adapted its body to life on land, using its feet to grasp and arms to walk. The original concept was a parody of King Kong, with bird features applied to an ape's general morphology. I sculpted the model in ZBrush, retopologized it with Topogun and baked and textured it in Painter. The feather bakes didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but I made some normal adjustments and curvature masking to get something approaching the refractive effect feathers have. If I were to do this over again, I'd go the route of creating cards for the feathers rather than relying on a bake. Of particular note are the beak and the finger/toe scales, those are the areas I feel came out the best in this design.