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Ken Barthelmey: creature & character designer interview

Ken Barthelmey

Creature & Character Designer

Regular 3dtotal Publishing contributor Ken Barthelmey, a creature and character designer from Luxembourg, shares his career so far, amazing artwork, and breaks down the process for his gallery image White Spike…

Ken's Website

3dtotal

Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you, what do you do, and where are you located?

Ken

My name is Ken Barthelmey and I’m a freelance creature and character designer from Luxembourg, working professionally in the movie industry for the past ten years. I had the pleasure to contribute design work to a vast array of films, including: The Maze Runner, It, Godzilla vs Kong, and The Tomorrow War.

I started drawing at an early age and have always been passionate about art and all creative things in general. Particularly coming up with imaginary creatures gave me great joy. My second love has always been movies. Films like Jurassic Park, Star Wars, and Aliens have been great inspirations for me.

Working as a creature designer is basically a combination of all my interests. I enjoy the variety of the job; every project has new challenges and the opportunity to learn something new. I feel fortunate to have a living from the work I’m passionate about, most of the time it doesn’t feel like work, more like a paid hobby.

3dtotal

What was the workflow behind your latest gallery image? Where did the idea come from?

Ken

My latest gallery image is the White Spike design I did for the film The Tomorrow War. Back in early 2019, I got invited to design the aliens for the science fiction film, starring Chris Pratt. I worked a few weeks with director Chris McKay and production designer Peter Wenham on the film.

The aliens were described to me as vicious creatures that attack and eat everything in sight. Director Chris McKay asked for a compelling design that conveyed the hunger and intelligence of these creatures. Additionally, the aliens needed to have different abilities such as fast swimming and flying. It was important that they were agile and be able to move extremely fast. It was my job to translate all this information into one cohesive design.

H.R. Giger’s Alien and Hellraiser were given to me as reference point, but Chris also encouraged me to show him additional ideas. He liked the work he had seen on my website and wanted to see what I’d come up with.

Because there was no clear description of the White Spikes, I started with pencil sketches and gave Chris a few different options to choose from in the beginning. In this early stage, it was all about brainstorming and coming up with interesting ideas.

In order to make them more threatening, he felt they needed to have some kind of an offensive weapon, and asked for a plausible way of how the White Spikes could shoot at their targets. I came up with the idea of spike-shooting-tentacles and pitched the idea in a sketch. Chris loved that idea and wanted me to develop that particular design further.

After that sketch got approved, I created a 3D model using ZBrush and did a few KeyShot renderings that were presented to the studio. To my surprise, I was told at the very end that other designers already had previously worked on different alien options, and ultimately it was my design that got picked for the film.

white spike the tomorrow war 3d creature design render model
White Spike design I did for The Tomorrow War.
pencil sketch early design the tomorrow war
Early pencil sketch I did for The Tomorrow War.

3dtotal

What challenges did the design present? Did you learn something new?

Ken

When designing a creature, the beginning is always the hardest part because you have to come up with ideas. There is very rarely a description and most directors want to see different options in the beginning. It’s basically solving problems all the time until a design gets approved.

The most challenging part in designing the White Spikes were to incorporate the many different abilities, such as fast swimming, flying, and the offensive weapon, into one cohesive design. I pictured the White Spikes more aquatic with tentacle-like legs in my early sketches. It ended up a bit too much like War of the Worlds and Matrix, nevertheless it was a great base that lead to the final design.

Another challenge was the limited time. Because of a planned meeting at the studio, I only had a few days to sculpt and render the White Spike. It was a tough deadline considering the complexity of the design, and exporting a model for rendering can be a time-consuming process. I finished everything on time and was later told that the studio loved my design.

3d model creature prehistorical designs alien horror designs
Personal work I created for my IP project.
the maze runner 3d model creature horror design griever
Griever I designed for the film The Maze Runner.

3dtotal

Do you use any other software, either for work or personal projects?

Ken

I always start with 2D drawings because it’s the fastest way for me to bring ideas on paper. After a sketch got approved I have a clear goal and I can focus on creating the 3D model, and develop the design further in three dimensions. I use ZBrush for sculpting and texturing my models, and Keyshot for the rendering. I usually render a few passes in KeyShot, which I then composite and overpaint in Photoshop.

3dtotal

Do you own any of 3dtoal Publishing’s titles? If so, which one(s) – and how did you find it?

Ken

I own a few books from the Digital Painting Techniques series. I’m a self-taught artist and these books helped me a lot in exploring different techniques. I also have been fortunate to be published in various 3dtotal Publishing books, including: Fundamentals of Creature Design, Sketching from the Imagination: Dark Arts, Digital Painting Techniques: Volume 7, ZBrush Characters and Creatures, Digital Art Masters: Volume 9, and Prime: The Definitive Digital Art Collection.

3dtotal

Who are your favorite artists, traditional or digital, and can you explain why?

Ken

I have many favorite artists. Rick Baker, Iain McCaig, Carlos Huante, Neville Page, Steve Wang, Norman Rockwell, Stan Winston, to name a few. I think I was six or seven years old when I saw Jurassic Park for the first time. My passion for movies developed after I saw that film. A while later, I watched the behind-the-scenes documentary and I was blown away by the animatronic and puppet work. That’s when I discovered the work of Stan Winston and his team. I got fascinated with special effects, visual effects, and the creation of movie monsters. I soon realized that the imaginative imagery in films were created by artists and that it’s an actual job. It was a big revelation for me and I knew I wanted to do that as well.

creature design rendering godzilla kaijuu king of monster
Creature design I did for Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

3dtotal

What are your artistic ambitions?

Ken

I always wanted to design iconic creatures and characters for movie productions. Since childhood, I loved watching movies that featured aliens and creatures, they fired my imagination and I enjoyed drawing them. Each time I watched a movie I drew the monsters afterwards, unintentionally that was good practice. Because of this I started with drawing very early on and eventually began to develop my own creations. I also want to create my own independent projects. Since the past few years I’m working on this story and I can’t wait to finally bring it visually on paper.

Pokémon Detective Pikachu 3d model creature design animal
Pokémon 3D concept I did for Pokémon Detective Pikachu.
Unused creature designed Godzilla vs Kong kaijuu
Unused creature I designed for Godzilla vs Kong.

3dtotal

What can we expect to see from you next?

Ken

I’m currently working on Aquaman 2 directed by James Wan, which will be released next year. I’ve been working on this project for over seven months now and I’ve never designed so many different creatures and characters for a movie yet. I also contributed a few concepts to an upcoming Netflix film, for Thor: Love and Thunder and for a secret project I can’t talk about yet. Next I’ll try to do less client work to focus more on my personal projects.

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