Tahm Kench - Genie of the Bayou

specsowl

Hello everyone, I haven't been here in a while and decided I'd try my hand at this contest. 
I love fish and fish lore and catfish have been known to be something like wish granting genies in some folklore. Of course, genies are absolute jerks and Tahm Kench fits that role quite well. I'm not quite sure how I want to do this skin but I am starting this progress thread for now. 

Look forward to working on it!

specsowl

Hello everyone! I started working on Tahm Kench and gathered some reference. I really wanted that typical genie feel but it's surprisingly difficult finding reference that isn't Genie from Aladdin! Djimmi from Cuphead breaks a lot of the typical conventions and I like his coloring. However, I want to choose something that will still make him identifiable as Tahm Kench and very visible on the map. For right now though, it's all about the concept.  



I'm not an incredibly strong 2D Artist so instead I started concepting in 3D. I started building a very rough Tahm Kench to just capture the proportions and key features. I wanted him to look like him before changing it. I was looking at his other skins as well and the urf skin is a pretty heavy departure from the original design. I felt like I could get away with a lot on this one. 

In his other designs, the chest is covered, but it was very un-genie like for that, so I decided to give him some uh...fat...on his chest. Needless to say it gave me a good chuckle. I also gave him a squiggly wispy tail. I notice his tail changes on the other skins so I figured it wouldn't be the end of the world to make it look like a genie tail. The only issue is that now he looks kind of lizardy. I'll be adding fins and whatnot, but I hope I dont have to add the caudal fins as well. 

Tahm Kench is a very broad character and as such he ends up with a ton of negative space on his front and back but very tight spaces on his arms and legs. I decided to keep the arms and legs somewhat simple from the profile, but adding more interesting features like the oil lamp necklace on the front. The back will be quite a challenge, and I'll really have to think on how to make it interesting. 

Any advice would be great! I'm having a ton of fun on it. 

Kazefield

Sounds like a super fun idea! I'll look forward to it  

UchiLT

Pretty clean surface and nice idea!.I'll keep an eye on this

Bodhwell

Super cute concept -- love the turban already!