Pablander
This is a quick 3D concept of an abyssal creature I designed as an example piece for the Creatures of the Deep art contest I'm running. The goal was to explore something strange but elegant… a passive, observant lifeform drifting through the deepest parts of the ocean. Sculpted and detailed in ZBrush with render passes from Maverick Render, and a quick paintover to push the final illustration.
Here is a made up story for this guy:
The Nemorion is a deep sea drifter found far below the hadopelagic zone, where light doesn’t reach and pressure would crush most life. It’s a slow-moving, bioluminescent creature with translucent skin and soft-glowing tendrils that help it blend into the dark.
Its eyes give it near 360° awareness, and some researchers believe it uses pulses of light to communicate or navigate across long distances.
It’s not aggressive… more of a passive observer, but its appearance has sparked plenty of myths among deep-sea crews who’ve seen glowing shapes just outside sonar range.
No real footage exists. Only scattered reports, a few blurry scans, and sketches like this one based on eyewitness accounts.
Here is the quick sketch in ZBrush using Polypaint for the textures:
And a time-lapse covering the compositing of various passes and the paint over details:
