Wednesday, August 31, 2011

My life as a crappy artist - Initiative Demon

You of course remember the Initiative Demon from episode 13, The Killer In Me, from season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right? Any good Buffy fan would, right? I barely recall the dang thing and I was on the design team for it. So that everyone is on the same page, this is Initiative Demon...

With cranial malformation like that you know it has to be a monster... also since it's face is made of silicone and the rest of it's head is made of foam latex.

I was able to find some time to take a fresh pass at another monster that I helped design while working on Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire series. This time around the Initiative Demon was the lucky winner. Here are some of my better original designs for the Initiative Demon from 2002...

RAWR! We started off very far from where we ended up!
© 2002 Almost Human

In the end, like many Buffy monsters, a sensible sweater and a pair of comfortable slacks will cover up all that monster body. ...hurm, more of those grey panels behind the designs, did I really think they helped?
© 2002 Almost Human

The whole idea behind the Initiative Demon was that is was a monstrous speed bump for the heroes as they explored the ruins of the Initiative, the secret anti-demon military base under the streets of Sunnydale. We were originally given a lot of room to explore what this mutant monster could look like. We were told it could be a mutated solder, a crazy mutant demon that had been used for experimentation, a half demon / half soldier or all of the above. It was pretty fun to explore all these crazy options. I immediately went for the giant mutant insect man. Little did we know that we had much less room to explore to come up with something new and exciting... an decision had already been made that it was going to be a half man / half rat mutant... a LAB RAT (HAR HAR HAR...) and would only have it's head and hands visible. All our designs were shelved and the rat man design was handled by my art director. It did not matter what the thing looked like anyway, it was so darkly lit on set you could not see it. All that aside, here is something... newer, for the design of the Initiative Demon...

Taking the Initiative Demon back!
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

RAWR! I am a big mutant insect man! In truth I have always liked the first of the two original designs I posted above. It may be a little rough around the edges, but I think there are a couple cool things about the idea. I still love the big crazy mutant arm... how would the actor done anything with that? As an added bonus I am including an additional updated design. Since the final demon turned out so different from the original concepts I have done an updated version of the rat man...

Not sure I want to take this Initiative Demon back...
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

Yikes, he has the mumps! I hope you have been vaccinated. I think I will stick with the insect monster, are rats really that scary in this day and age? On to the next art albatross that I carry around my neck...

That is all for another exciting Wednesday, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact
me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

1 comment:

  1. I liked the designs here...just looking for inspiration to draw something. The last head drawing is certainly more Rat inspired and has a great mutated quality to the artwork.

    I do like the lobster or crab claw on the previous full figure drawing, drawing something like that on a creature always is cool to sketch out.

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