Original Artwork by Scott Riddell
#RiddellSDesign
Friday 18 July 2025
The Barhog
About This Sketch
‘The Barhog’ is a character development sketch of a creature designed for one of Scott’s current projects ‘Spiriture’. The Barhog is a sentient creature which dwells deep within an ancient and magical forest. Scott has been developing the ‘Spiriture’ animation for a number of months, but so far has been focusing on the background for this animation. As Scott has come to add characters to this story, he has decided to finalise the character designs for this project to make it easier to add them when he is ready.
The original sketch was created with the design software ‘Procreate Dreams’ a powerful animation software that Scott uses to animate his own short sequences and characters. The original image is one which Scott found as he was researching ancient creatures and by layering his reference image under the first layer of his own design and then removing the original Scott was able to use the reference image to begin building a creature of his own design. This process is called Rotoscoping and it is something Scott has been learning how to do since December 2024. This is the first design which has been completed start to finish by Scott on his own.
The featured image of The Barhog was edited by DS Coremans using Photoshop. The background for the image was edited and enhanced by boosting the colours of the image using a colour filter.
In the alternate images of The Barhog, different colour schemes were generated different internal filters.
This hybrid work between Scott and Darren is something they have been working on together since early 2025, so that both of them can learn new skills, but also so that Scott can get a better sense of how these characters could be developed as he continues to work on his skills as an animator.
Key inspirations for Scott at the moment are from some of his favourite animated movies. From Dreamworks; the Shrek franchise, from Blue Sky Studios; the Ice Age franchise, and Disney in general, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary as an animation studio.
If you would like to see more of Scott’s work, or find out more about his designs, consider following Scott on his social media platforms, or by liking and sharing his post here on scottriddell.org
Stay Creative. Stay Safe. Stay Inspired.
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