Up until this point I hadn't been getting anything I liked. A few scrapped thumbnails and some stone face designs I came up with after figuring out exactly what kind of look I'm going to go with. Going to try and give it a Shadow of the Colossus vibe :>
(black and white sketch on page not by me, credit goes to concept artist from the game (not sure what their name is D: ) )
side note, I don't think I've ever struggled this much with coming up with a solid concept, really glad to be pushing my boundaries right now!
Some sketches I did while at work. I'll be uploading some more sketches later tonight with some slightly more refined ideas :>
Really love the design on the left, this one's a winner for me. Going to mess around with the head just a little bit before I think about finishing the design process! Eager to hear what your guys' thoughts are as always of course! :>
(also, for anyone who is interested, I compiled a playlist of songs that inspire me/I listened to while designing this creature, here's a link to listen: ART WAR 4 Playlist )
I listen to your playlist it really puts an environment feeling in you and also nice choice on that one you like.
You managed to get a cohesive design very well. Just take care of how the architectural part will move or not, according to the bear movement. 
More work... I had some difficulties translating the previous design's head into 3D space so I started meddling around in Maya 2020 for a couple hours. Trashed a bunch of sculpts trying to find a good shape for the head, and now I'm stuck between having the character don a more flat face or use the one shown at the bottom. This page isn't complete yet (haven't added the ancient city/architecture on the bear's back in the bigger sketch, mostly just wanted to see how the new design would look on the body.
Can't decide, flat mask or the one shown on the model? Let me know what you think!
UPDATE:
Updated above image, going to be coloring and rendering full body concept on the right in a new page!
I like the current skull bear. I think picking any of the alternative heads you might have to alter the design alot again.
I prefer largely the bone-like skull than the flats one !
Your design is so cool ! I'll be looking forward to see what you'll come up with 
@serovero I agree! I wanted to get the alternative heads on paper just to show my thought processes :> looked better in my head than on paper lol
@Oceane_Roh yeah it's definitely the winner, I'd say haha. Thank you very much too, I am excited to post more tonight!
Damn the concepts for this are really indepth. Looks amazing so far and I'm getting a distinct Shadow of the Colossus feel with those last few pages!
@nesokaiyoh thank you! I'm definitely inspired by shadow of the colossus for this, but I'm also trying to avoid making it look like it came right out of that universe lol.
I like that you're pushing against it then, imo the sheet you posted 7 days ago does look like it came right from the game which honestly is impressive in itself lol I'm excited to see where you push it though
Almost forgot to do some work on the symbol! I'm having trouble deciding if it should be a hole or maybe the paint reads better. Kind of leaning towards the paint but still on the fence!
The paint was inspired by Horizon Zero Dawn's Banuk painings (really beautiful symmetrical designs and colors, check them out!)
on the topic of paint on rocks, does anyone know a solid technique for making the paint look like paint? Can't seem to achieve the same level of realism as something like this:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F63%2F4a%2Fe4%2F634ae4bfa00ec2d85fd571a3fd4c093c.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
That has a lot of photobashing, and textured brushes (I photobash concepts too so it's a skill I'm familiar with). He probably imports photo textures and paints over them using lasso and textured brushes. If you want to learn that kind of technique without photos, then Shaddy safadi is a good bet. Look him up on Google, I learned my textured painting from him too and it;s definitely worthwhile. (The videos are free on his website!)
so I've come across a huge roadblock. I'm not sure if it's a virus or not but I went to go and uninstall a questionable program I had on my machine and it took on a sort of "if I go down, I'm taking you with me" nature and uninstalled half the programs on my computer (Office, all Adobe programs, chrome, and a lot of other important programs).
Fortunately, it didn't damage or remove any of my documents so I still have all of my ART WAR work, but I'm going to need to repair the damage and so my next few posts will probably be delayed. Going to need to re-install all of the programs that were lost and figure out what happened and whether or not I have a virus. Reconfiguring all my photoshop settings to the way I had it before is going to be really arduous though, haha. Definitely going to reinstall photoshop by tomorrow and get that back up and running so I can be back in business ASAP!
Before I continue I'd love to upload the WIP for the final concept page. I decided to choose tribal paint for the emblem, but it felt out of place by itself on her stomach so I decided to add more paint on the rock formations on her back. I think I may also add some to her skull if it doesn't get too crowded on the design. Gonna add little bits of paint on parts of the design to make it feel more complete.
Let me know what you think!
WIP:
Sorry to hear about the computer stuff, I've been having a lot of trouble myself, had to reset from the harddrive twice and completely uninstall and reinstall Windows from my SSD. Had to install everything so many times and it was still crashing, figured it might now be a RAM problem so I took one out to test individual crashes lmao been lucky so far. Either way there's no rush and you don't have to post every single day, seeing your effort and attitude towards though is really nice and admirable.
I think it's looking lovely so far and I enjoy the design, I hope you can sort out the problem soon and properly get back into it!
