Portalarium concept artist Stephen Daniele held another Pen of the Avatar Google+ Hangout yesterday, this time giving us a look at some fan-submitted 3D assets that Portalarium has received, and walking us through his monster creation process.

The session began, as noted above, with a look at some fan-submitted 3D assets. Most notably, there were braziers:

What’s an Ultima-like game without braziers?

…and a guillotine:

Clearly a watermelon slicer.

I gather that both assets were submitted by The_Hairy_Man, who is quite a talented artist in his own right and a regular denizen of the Shroud of the Avatar forums.

Following this, the discussion turned to Stephen’s monster design process, which he likened to creating a series of chess pieces:

Except good luck taking Queen with Pawn in this ranking.

Working with the example of spiders, he explained that creature design typically involves creating a basic, foundational model, which then receives different artistic embellishments depending on what level of monster it needs to be. Low-level monsters look more or less like the basic creature they are based upon, whilst high-level creatures incorporate other features in their design, as illustrated by this creepy-looking thing:

BLARRRRRRRRRRRGH!

Several other spider concepts were drawn during the session, so do be sure to check the whole thing out to see them all (some even ended up being a tad too…mature, let’s say…for inclusion in Shroud of the Avatar).