39 President Malphas

[carpal]

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In demonology, Malphas is a mighty Great President (a Prince to some authors) of Hell, having forty legions of demons under his command. He builds houses, high towers and strongholds, throws down the buildings of the enemies, can destroy the enemies' desires or thoughts (and/or make them known to the conjurer) and all what they have done, gives good familiars, and can bring quickly artificers together from all places of the world.

Malphas accepts willingly and kindly any sacrifice offered to him, but then he will deceive the conjurer.

He is depicted as a crow that after a while or under request changes shape into a man, and speaks with a hoarse voice.
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I am pretty excited to take part in this project and have been trying to find the time to sketch some stuff up. So far I know I want to play with scale in the bg and need to put more thought into his design. We will see where this goes...


a sketch as an idea for the structures/scale of Malphas' hell.


late night sketching for some design ideas, only part I like are his messed up multiple jointed arms from transforming between man and crow.


Thanks for setting up an awesome community project!

[nihra]

I gotta say, I like the atmosphere in the bg sketch! Interesting to see where this one goes!

[carpal]

iunno, spare time has been lacking lately. plodding onward...

[Emanu]

malphas is cute! I imagined him taking up more space in the final picture though, his role in the composition feels a bit subdued now.

in other news im glad were doing totally different stuff with malphas, but both will be super cool!

[ceenda]

That background sketch is amazing, very atmospheric indeed! I agree with Emanu that Malphas is a little bit subdued in the latest sketch. I'd pondered maybe putting Malphas in the middle ground. i.e., That amazing castle in the distance, Malphus in the middle ground, and the small character with the dogs bottom right to add a sense of scale to Malphas.

[carpal]

Emanu - I am glad we are going in different directions too, love your concept! I agree about the size of Malphas, Ceenda hits on it also. I thought one of the coolest parts of him was him being the builder of "houses, high towers, and strongholds." But the composition might be a bit even.

Ceenda - I totally agree, the scale is getting lost in the translation to the final and I am going to fight to bring that back. Working on the rendering I have tried to keep that in mind. Thanks for the comments!

I worked on it a bit more but I think I am still a couple hours out of final, going to try and take note of these critiques...



Everyone is killing it on these, it is great to see them all come along. Gonna keep at it cause I can't believe some people are done already. Time went too fast.

[Khor]

The thingie above his left (right, for us) wing struck me as a really badly placed lower jaw at first glance... Other than that it looks great !

[darkreaver]

i'm with the others, the background looks really great...I love the blue purple glow with the yellow clouds =D

I'm getting a poor sense of scale here...it looks like the demon is man sized, holding a miniature tower. is he supposed to be big? I think rendering him in bright saturated tones makes it look like he's close by, and on the same scale as the viewer (presumably human sized). Maybe put him further into the distance, and render him somewhere between what you have now and the way the background is rendered. there should be something in the foreground, or something at the same distance as the demon to get a better sense of size.

also, is the glowing sigil above his head actually above his head, or is it part of a tower in the distance? if the former, maybe the sigil should be larger than the tower outline to make it clear. or if the latter, remove it, because it is a bit confusing.