Concept art: The goal was to create a sand themed monster. My mind immediately jumped over to a few of my most played games that have large desert areas or at least desert monsters. Secret world legends with their Djinn near the lava zones of Egypt. World of warcraft with their arcane and mana wraiths in the Ever-song Woods. And finally, Star Wars: knights of the old republic with their rancors on Tatooine. Next came location. I thought about the Egypt level in secret world legends but realized that for such a brutal force of a creature such a location may lead to more trouble than it's worth. So I settled on the Middle East. In most games I have played, the Middle East is a brutal but beautiful place, so a perfect place for a creature like this.

This is the torso of the creature started as a sphere. I stretched out 3 points and narrowed down the back of it. the brushes used were the move, move elastic, and smoothing brushes. The smoothing brushing sculpting pro mod turned on. With this turned on, as you smoothed the object it world redo the mesh.

Added a cylinder to the base of the creature. At first I considered using the subtract mode to smooth out the bottom, then build my hips from there but that plan was scrapped. I didn't like the way subtraction looked, so I made the cylinder solid and just placed it. 

The head started off as a cube. I decided to use the kit bashing technique due to problems sculpting the head on my own. The kit came from a practice course covering the technique. the rougher areas (upper lip/brow) were down with a clay buildup brush then smoothed down. Later on I do add a lip below the fangs. The rancor from Star Wars: knights of the old republic was the main inspiration for this creature. Rancors have relatively flat faces meant for standing up to sand storms and harsh desert conditions. 

Added the head to the body. I didn't want to set the head squarely on the shoulders. This creature is meant to be a little hunched over but in an odd way. The head in the chest is a way to portray that without extra sculpting. 

Added embellishments and make to the chest. The torso is a rather large area with a lot of blank space. I used the more flat pieces of the organic kit mentioned above with symmetry turned on. I wanted to give the impression that there is something beneath sand or at least the creature is not entirely made of sand.

Adding the crystals: At first I attempted to sculpt the crystals in Maya but found that to be quite a pain to do. After I had found a decent crystal, I started to work on forming the leg/legs. This piece was based off the djinn of secret world legends, mainly their lower torso and clothes. When I first encountered the creature in the game. I failed to realize, they do in fact have legs. What caught my attention though was what they wear, it looks to be a tattered up kilt or something along those lines. I pulled that idea and settled on making something similar. At first I deleted the cylinder that was the hips and sculpted directly on to the torso but soon found that the crystal cluster wasn't coming out right.

I remade the cylinder that Ade up the base of the hips and proceeded to create a rather large crystal cluster in place of actual legs.

the back looked quite blank so I added a pattern using an IMM brush with the crystal as what I wanted to paint on.

The final model (above and below). I will not be adding arms as I am on a time crunch.