Hey guys! Let's design a "Beholder". What's a Beholder? If you search up the definition of "behold", it literally means to see or observe, so a beholder is one who does just that. But in the D&D community, the design of beholders is much more exaggerated with a bunch of eyes. Based on Wikipedia, they are floating orbs of flesh with large mouths, they have a single central eye and many smaller eyestalks on top with powerful magical abilities. If you search on Google or Pinterest, you'll see what I'm talking about.
So let's start. Just pick some colors and start by sketching a circle, a central eye, a mouth, and some eye stalks. We might need 64x64px for this one but we're not going to think too hard just yet.
Now the first thing we'd might want to refine is the face of this creature, not so much the eye stalks yet because I think the face takes priority. Let's start with the eye, I want to give him a reptilian "predator" looking eye so I will make his pupil shaped like a vertical oval. I also want to make it wetter looking to I will add a highlight to it.
It's not necessarily done, but it's good enough for now. Next, I want to work on his jaw more. I want his mouth to look more aggressive and scary. We can start by stretching his jaws apart even further like he's about to chomp but if we're going to do that, we should also make his eye look wider and more alert too. His teeth are too clean so I will give it some yellow, we can try giving him some drool and slobber, gums, etc. You can try drawing the uvula in the back of his throat but I tried it and it just looks like too much detail everywhere so I removed it.
Much more menacing already! Next thing I'd work on are the eye stalks. They are currently unpolished and I want them to look longer, snakier and have a unified focus on something such as a potential victim the beholder is going to eat.
Alright this is coming along nicely! Beholders are pretty magical, and they often have the ability to cast powerful beams of energy through their eyes, so I thought it would be cool to make his big eye look more magical.
Now it's just a matter of polishing. Here is where we work on the shading, the texturing, and decide to add any last minute details. I think I want this one to look more slimy, and brain-like such as the first reference image, because these guys are pretty intelligent if you read about on D&D sites. I will try adding bumpier, slimier texture to his skin so I will be using highlights.
And there we have it! Thanks for checking out the tutorial, I hope you enjoyed it and see you in the next one.
