Cyberpunk Balrog 

FLy, you fools!

I love The Lord of the Rings. I love Balrogs. They have such a menacing design; even in the books. They’re described as being surrounded by shadow but still appearing to have the same general shape as a human. I wanted to use that idea for this character. Within the context of the hypothetical (for now) game, I picture this character emerging from darkness with only its bright orange lights depicting its form. The creature is entirely mechanical, and the thin steel wings are there more for show than any practical purpose.

Whip it!

This is my first made-from-scratch character rig. I got to learn a lot about what makes a rig easy to use. I used set driven keys to control different aspects of the wings. This proved much easier to animate with than moving individual controls around. The part I had the most difficulty with was the whip. I ended up using Jørn-Harald Paulsen’s method found here. That gave me a lot of freedom to shape the curve of the whip.