I like to imagine that his crown is actually made from some of the hands that weren't totally grafted into him. Like leftover parts that he had his smiths and jewelers plate in gold and shaped into a crown.

I believe the creature you made would be absolutely perfect at the top of Caria Manor. The circle of empty chairs, the glintstone sorcerers, and the finger spiders in the courtyard. It all fits just like a puzzle piece. Perfectly

My personal favorite creature in Elden Ring would have to be Rykard Lord of Blasphemy. "You must join the serpant lord as....family...." with Maliketh closely behind him. As for what I would personally like you to cover, it wouldn't be a specific game but rather I would like you to cover Dark Fantasy as an aesthetic. I'd like to see your interpretations of Night Artorias from Dark Souls followed by the Nameless King from Dark Souls 3 and Blaidd from Elden ring. But most of all, I would love to see if you could just give the Dragon God a look even if its just a quick glance. Its my favorite dragons design followed by your Alduin from Skyrim that you designed.

I say that Arcane is a concept art that came to life in an animation. Elden Ring is a fantasy book come to life, it has concepts from Berserk, other Soulsbornes from the company, fantasy and medieval European Asian everything is an inspiration and reference for anyone who plays, artists included.

The finger crown is certainly a unique aesthetic. Reminds me how Gideon the all knowing had many ears and eyes molded into his armor Top shelf design and video

Fromsoft are really on a different level when it comes to designing characters and creatures. The amount of unique and memorable enemy and boss designs across their games is staggering.

I can imagine this was a lord under Rykard, there is speculation that Rykard created the finger creepers through grafting which would tie the finger crown and the grafted design together Rykard was also a son of Rennala and is thus linked with sorceries, it might then be interesting to change his blue glintstone to an orange glintstone like the Gelmir staff

I love the final piece. It reminds me of the Death (Christmas Future) from Scrooged with Bill Murray, which I always loved (though it scared me too) as a kid.

I've been feeling overwhelmed for a long while by drawing or art in general, as I work full time as a chef I have little spare time, your videos have reminded me what I love about art and concept art and has led me to scour through Adam Adamowicz work on fallout 3 for hours, and began the ball rolling on me keeping a sketchbook again, so thank you, sincerely, from an artist who thought he'd begun to give up p.s love your artwork

The creature looks a bit daggerfall i love it !

What a great boss concept! Thanks for sharing and walking us through your design process!

I want to thank you for sharing your process of creating, I am not an animator or an artist but it's helped me create good descriptions for worlds that I have been building in for a long time and in a lot of ways has renewed my love for worldbuilding.

I won’t pretend I know much about art, but I game a LOT and so I actually stumbled onto your work today via an old Reddit thread about Giants in Skyrim (which explains why I’ve fought like one giant in that game despite have literally thousands of hours). As far as my favorite Elden ring characters, it would have to be Malenia and the Dragonlord. Explaining the Dragonlord is easy. He’s huge and imposing. When I first encountered him I just *knew* he was going to be a ridiculous fight. His music, his design… everything about him is just so imposing. Even the missing heads he has… it all there to signify that’s he’s seen everything this world has had to offer and yet he’s still standing. He might not be the apex predator of the world, but from the moment you meet him, you know he’s incredibly close. Malenia is a favorite of mine for a completely different reason. For starters, I just have an innate fascination with knights/adventurers of old and Malenia certainly plays to that aesthetic. Besides the fact that she’s huge, when you meet her, she kind of looks like you: wearing armor that’s ragged looking but is purely for functionality. They way she positions her frame as she approaches is also very guarded - or perhaps defensive is a better term- as well. Unlike so many characters in game who are willing to invite damage unto themselves, so long as they can damage you, it sort of feels like Malenia prioritizes her own survival in the fight above all else. also like the lore you’ve learned about her up to that point (even if you haven’t been trying to): she’s literally just a lone knight, fighting on behalf of her younger brother, single handedly tearing through the lands between. I guess what resonates about her character the most with me is that she’s kind of a mirror for the player character: she and her brother have seen there’s something wrong with the lands between and they’re willing to fight whomever prevents them from “fixing” it. She’s one of the only characters in game where I don’t feel great about defeating her (though I do feel relieved because she is HARD).

Love your approach to creating something within an existing universe. You really get into and understand before you add to it. It's a process more people in hollywood should take. It shows respect and reverence for the lore and it pays off in the final product. You're great artist, Sir Jonah the wise

This is a certified Elden Ring classic

I was actually in the process of commenting that this video made for excellent background audio while I’m pursuing my own creative endeavors when the original was taken down. Wonder what happened.

This is the first video I watched from your channel and while I'm not an artist nor do I want to be one, I really enjoyed how you explained what goes into designing a character and what that design can tell you implicitly. By the way what are your thoughts on Malenia's design? Personally, she's my favourite of all the shardbearers!

Well, it’s official : you got a fan in me ! I hope to see more of your work soon !!

Excellent vid! Really loved the approach of choosing a silhouette and lore first to guide your process. It would have been interesting to hear a bit more about what type of spells he would cast or what area of the map he might be found in and how those influence his lore. Theoretically of course :)

so I'm learning drawing 3 days ago. but this video give me so much motivation! my thanks to you🙏

great stuff Jonah! looking forward to seeing more :D

I really like the character design! I think it would be cool if the councilors had shields and spears instead of swords, sort of like the phalanx boss from Demon Souls.

Im so happy i found your channel from the falloutvid

It could be great if you do more characters from Elden Ring universe with analysing and approaching as concept artist/designer perspective. 👍👍

my favorite elden ring creature? hands.. x) they're perfectly skittery

This was brilliant. The creativity in your horror design is very reminiscent of MeatCanyon, but yours is much more realistic. Love it!

Great video and fantastic design! I loved the gradient maps technique, going to try it on my next piece, thanks a lot for sharing 👏🙌

What an amazing video! I really appreciate how much thought and effort you put into making a character that feels like they fit perfectly in the Lands Between! Fantastic design, fantastic explanations, and your enthusiasm for character design is inspiring!

Incredible!!

Awesome video, Jonah! I'm not an artist, nor am I looking to become one, but I still enjoy your videos (apart from the really technical stuff you inevitably get into). I think your monster would fit nicely into the world of Elden Ring, and the backstory is simple, yet full of possible, intriguing depth, which is really what you want to hit when designing a character like this. I hope to see more videos like these in the future, but you're right about prioritizing income, so don't sweat it if you don't find the time. If you do end up making more in the future though, there are some really great games that come to mind when I think of excellent creature/character design. I'd love to see you riff on the Monster Hunter Series, The Last Of Us 1 & 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Killing Floor 1 & 2, The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series, The Metro Series, or perhaps something from D&D. Those are just my picks from the gaming world, but you could also consider movies or TV shows! I liked Elden Ring a lot, but I never finished it because I eventually just got bored of essentially doing the same thing over and over. I think it comes down to the lack of a society in the game. While exploring the world, fighting monsters and clearing dungeons was fun, I eventually grew tired of it. I think having a balance to it through being able to engage with a living society with NPCs of some sort would make the game much more enjoyable to me. Every now and then I'll want a break from the action, and I want NPCs to talk to, trade with, get to know, get quests from, learn about the world from, and everything else that comes with socializing and engaging with a civilization and a culture. You might say "Oh, but then it would just be a clone of Skyrim" but Skyrim is my favorite game of all time, and we haven't had a new Elder Scrolls game in 11 years, and we won't for at least a few more. I'd say the gaming world is due a new Open World RPG of the same caliber, style and genre as Skyrim, because there hasn't been one that's gotten close to hitting the nail on the head as well as Skyrim did. Oh, and my favorite enemies were the Mad Pumpkin Head guys because they looked really funny while being pretty iconic, and the Fingercreepers (AKA Spiderhands) because they were seriously unnerving while also really well envisioned and executed by the artists.

Amazing Art as Always! :)

so glad I found this channel! I'm an aspiring comic artist as a second career, and I found myself struggling with monster creation these days. Even though the storytelling of my monster aims towards a more ambiguous stance compared to a monster that is designed to be encountered by the player as an enemy, this video still has some valuable pointers. "practice the art of non-attachment" is such helpful advice since I have been wondering lately "is this design actually good or did I just get used to it?", thanks to you I now have a strategy to find out!

Fantastic!

lol! love that you named all the heads😀

Loved your vid and how you laid out your process. I would love to see you tackle some stuff from Dishonored. The game has some cool designs but they are all super grounded to one look. Ive never seen a series that stuck to its core identity so much. They also do some cool things with cloth, fabrics and fashion. Or if you are looking for a weirder recommendation. It would be super cool to hear you opinion on the more cartoony versions of monster design. Like Persona or Final Fantasy bosses.

I would love to see you take a look at another of FromSoftware's games. In particular, this design reminds me a little bit of Bloodborne, which has some of the best enemy design I've ever seen anywhere. The Lovecraftian horror melds really well with From's style. Excellent video, as always!

I'm really curious as to how your layer system works. Like how many layers and what do you put on each layer?

at 17:30 I really thought a Raid: Shadow legends ad was coming up😂

My favorite creature design in Elden Ring is the Elden Beast, it’s very majestic and beautiful.

Fascinating video to see the process here. I definitely agree that shape plays a major factor in From’s design. Enemies and bosses have a variety of stances and body mass that make them all read from one another. The final result I think lands somewhere between Elden Ring and Diablo I think, of course this is really just a first concept and in your own style. I think it’s the good and blue shades that land me there in reaction. Elden Ring and Dark Souls 2 are the main From games that use a primary blue like that while the rest are using way more muted palettes. Do love the idea of this contrasting halves of an enemy though.

Do you do mentorships or teach at cgma or schoolism? I'd love to really have an opportunity to study under you in some capacity. In love with your work and another great video. Also if you were getting paid to do this and you were iterating would you fully paint it out and then paint it again in a new way? or would you simply take it to the sketch phase and repeat. Trying to find a good process for my portfolio building.

This is awesome! I've really missed seeing your character design videos. I'm not great at drawing and mostly do 3d. Someday I would love to actually get decent at drawing!

No sir! U shouldn't hate anything or anybody!

Hello from Ukraine ! Thanks for the video, very helpful and inspiring 👏😍

This should've been Godfroy

Nice beard!

The hip hop beat isnt doing it for me in a vid ab elden ring, maybe im just sound sensitive lmfao

Considering the subject matter, your narration is quite disarming 😏

Your art work is amazing, yet it feel like something from Warcraft. Im gona have audacity to tell that you maded western knock-off of Godrick. My intention aren't to insult you, concept of westernized Dark souls is interesting, so i ask will you do rest of the Elden ring crew?

Hello! I was wondering if I could get in contact with you in some way through private messages? Im working on a sketching project atm and Im taking inspiration from the bosses of bloodborne. I find it hard to use the reference from bosses and make something original. I aim to design 25-30 monsters, and I am making progress very slowly, I brainstormed all day yesterday and only came up with 1 monster design. I want to make 2 types of monsters, grotesque, beastly creatures with body horror aspects, otherworldly and alien like entities or a mix of both. I was thinking we could message each other and I could send you pictures of my progress, of course if thats fine with you

Oof

stupid bell wasn't selected. thanks, man, for all your insights! I joined your livestream years ago and you gave me such great advice on a piece of my art. Your words stuck with me, and I not only improved the image we looked at, but I've taken the ideas into my later work. So, truly, thank you. @RedCatHabitat

my absolute favorite elden ring enemy are wormfaces with a very close second being rykard