by Mike Vaillancourt

In this concept art Insider, I’ll go over the visual development of the King of Camazotz by Andrea Uderzo! And like every concept art Insider, it all starts with a written description.

The King of Camazotz is savage. He became king by murdering his way up and outlasting everyone who sought to dethrone him. All of his power is derived from his ability to bite his opponents to death. He is a vampire in every sense. He may be slow, but a large wingspan is suggested to lift how heavy he is. The best way to describe him would be a demon that has bat-like elements or a black dragon that has bat-like elements. He could be wearing ornamental bone armor or jewelry from dead kaiju he has killed.

With that description in hand as well as some visual inspiration, Andrea addressed the underlying anatomy of the figure first and presented us with several armor options.

From the anatomical perspective, I liked the body construction of G but wanted to bulk up the feet and add more mass to him. From the armor point of view, I liked the chest piece of #7, the shoulder and arm decoration of #1, the head piece of #2 (but pull the extra plumage and tone down the stuff sticking off the sides of the face and wrapping up behind the ears), and the legs from #5. Emanuel Class, the man behind the monster, was digging C and D, and we were mostly in agreement on armor, but it still needed some adjustments. The one thing Erik Reiersen in production thought worked better was a more hunched pose for the figure, and he provided several casting notes to look out for when moving forward. With Erik’s note, I requested a departure from the Man-Bat style anatomy in order to push it further toward an actual bat.

With all of that in place, we received the sketches above. I thought that #9 was working in the right direction, but I knew that we would need to tone down the hair. Erik had additional notes for casting purposes that I incorporated into the feedback for the next round of revisions.

At this point, #10 was working in the direction we liked the most, and so Andrea was off to the races for the final with a proposed pose sketch included.

And so here it is, the final line art with the proposed pose. This was then uploaded for Ron Kruzie to get into the sculpting cue. By now, you may have seen the final painted sculpt. And if so, I hope you all love it as much as we do—I can’t wait to see what the community does with him!