I decided to take the HP Lovecraft-inspired route and imagined an abomination similar to those inhabiting the underground dwellings of Charles Dexter Ward. Imagine exploring an ancient stone vaulted gallery deep beneath the earth and out of the cold, dank silence a being like this shambles blindly (and very hungrily) into the path of your roving torch beam…
My submission
I sculpted the creature in Zbrush from a dynamesh sphere, although the mouth details, the metal jewellery and the stone scenery was all created in Maya using polygonal modelling workflows. The textures were all painted in Zbrush and it is from here that I generated all these renders.
A (sort of) isometric view to give you a better idea of the scene as a whole.
Wireframe view of my character
The initial sculpt
The sculpt, having been decimated, imported into Maya and UV mapped, then brought back into Zbrush along with the other scene objects for painting. I decided to include jewellery to add some further detail to the character and also to suggest he may have once been human and this is a greatly degenerated form.
The scene painted but not yet lit
Texture map for the character