Styx - Master of Shadows

Styx - Master of Shadows and it's sequel are two of my favorite video games ever. For ages I've been thinking about doing a prosthetic based on Styx, I finally got around to it this past summer. I immediately already had ideas for a shoot to accompany it. What should have been a overly elaborate shoot, just became a regularly elaborate shoot since I was able to cobble together a decent costume from stuff I had in storage from years of making movies and other shoots.

Just a shot showing off the contacts lenses as they normally look, I added a lighted effect over them for all the other shots.

A series of headshots, just to get an idea of lighting and how the piece would work, even these turned out great.

This is the first time I've actually storyboarded a photoshoot. Back when I made movies I used to do this all the time and since I knew this wouldn't be a random, improved pose shoot, and I wanted to create a really strong narrative element to it I thought this would cut out a lot of last minute stress and frustration during the shoot, plus the risk of missing a shot idea would be greatly reduced.

This one shot was a massive amount of work to do, but it was something I had in mind right from the beginning. One of my favorite D&D monsters if the Otyugh, so I very early on decided I would have Styx encounter an Otyugh - I just had no idea how I'd do it. In the end I sculpted a little minature Otyugh in Cosclay and just lit it similarly to the original image and comped it in.

I also wanted everything to have an 80s movie feel, so this really helped sell that idea since the Otyugh looks like a little stop-motion monster in the background.

And lastly, since in the 2nd Styx game he had a female Paladin companion throughout the game I thought this would be a good idea to incorporate into this shoot, but I wasn't interested in creating that armor so I again went with what I had on hand and came up with an elf character.

 

Blue Cazuhl Demon.

This was intended to be a relatively simple "random Demon" shoot and it became this. Sometimes when a makeup gets elaborate looking like this there's a point where you're not sure it's going to work or not, but all the way with this is seemed like it was going somewhere specific until I finally finished it. Really happy with how it turned out.

 

Dr. Zoidberg

This kind of shoot is way outside of what I normally do, although I am sort of changing what I normally do but not to this extreme and that's another conversation. I chose to specifically do this shoot because of the prosthetic I make, The Flayer. The intention of The Flayer was to create a simple Mind Flayer prosthetic, but upon seeing it I realized there was a very decent comparison to Dr. Zoidberg.

I usually get comments comparing my designs to other existing things (most of the time the comparisons are a massive stretch though), in this case I had to admit there was pretty obvious comparison to be made. So I decided that this was something I had to do just to see how it would work.

The idea sat on the shelf for a couple years, I needed to make and collect all the parts needed, eventually it happened and I was able to get this turned out. It was a slightly rushed shoot, but overall I am really happy with how it turned out.

The Flayer is also one of my best selling pieces and despite my limited intention with the design, I'm really glad to see it's more versatile than I had planned. And, as a side note, I do have plans to for a much more elaborate Flayer prosthetic - this one will remain, there'll just be two versions.

Why not Zoidberg?