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Mathias Waltz
3D Artist & Game Designer
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Fish Monster Playable Class (for the game "Darkest Dungeon")

This is a personal project of mine that I started back in October of 2024 and finished recently. Designed for the video game "Darkest Dungeon", this is a custom playable character that I designed, rendered, rigged, animated and finally, implemented in-game. The character is based on other fish-like monsters that can be found in the base game.

(All other assets seen in this artwork that are not the fish character are NOT owned or created by me. All content in the game is Copyright Red Hook Studios Inc. All rights reserved. This project is purely fan-made and is not an official product of Red Hook Studios Inc.)

When first designing the class, I initially started with only the outline, since the game's artstyle heavily uses black for its shading. I then moved onto flat colors, and finally shading. (with refs of the game in transparent)

When first designing the class, I initially started with only the outline, since the game's artstyle heavily uses black for its shading. I then moved onto flat colors, and finally shading. (with refs of the game in transparent)

Once I had the design finalized and shaded properly, I started drawing the other poses of the character, such as the top 3 poses which are the idle, resting and dodge poses. After that, the remaining poses are mainly for attacks, alongside their VFXs.

Once I had the design finalized and shaded properly, I started drawing the other poses of the character, such as the top 3 poses which are the idle, resting and dodge poses. After that, the remaining poses are mainly for attacks, alongside their VFXs.

Ditto, more attack poses with their VFXs.

Ditto, more attack poses with their VFXs.

Some portrait-like art that is more detailed and less chibi than the rest. Since these pictures are supposed to be close-ups of the characters, they had to be more detailed.

Some portrait-like art that is more detailed and less chibi than the rest. Since these pictures are supposed to be close-ups of the characters, they had to be more detailed.

As I made each sprites, I imported them one by one in dragonbones to rig them and animate them. Since everything's 2D, I had to chop up the character so that I could give "weight" to different parts of the model, such as the cloth or head.

Thanks to the artstyle & animation of the game, it is possible to reuse a lot of assets for multiple animations. Here, the character's walk animation uses almost only the same body parts as the idle from before!

the attacks were a bit simpler since those don't move, but the VFXs still need to be animated. (Most of the time only fade-ins/fade-outs, but occasionally there can be some complexity as seen here with the wave caustics effect).

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