"The Corrupted"

A few months back, my good friend Kevin and I decided that our original sci-fi universe "Novus Imperium" needed a new hostile alien species.  I don't wish to disclose all of their backstory as of yet, but suffice to say that they're an alien species which has been "corrupted" by an ancient, long-forgotten piece of technology, hence their name.

While brainstorming, Kevin and I agreed that they ought to be mammalian, with a vaguely humanoid structure, but "unsettling" in some way.  This is the sketch that resulted from that description:

While their design isn't completely finalized, this at least gave me something to base my concept designs around.  The next step, naturally, was to try to get a feel for their armor.  The Corrupted's technology is in many ways a less sophisticated adaption of the technology used by the ancient Seraphim, who appear to have colonized many of the Terravon Galaxy's worlds hundreds of thousands of years ago.  In short: "low-rent Seraphim tech."  While their technology pales in comparison to the original Seraphim technology on which it is based, it is still far in advance of the rest of the galaxy.

With that in mind, I produced this rough concept of a Corrupted infantry unit:

Once again, not perfectly true to the intent, but as a rough concept that's not the aim.  It's about hammering out the kinks in the design and figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Over the last few days, then, I've produced a few sketches based on that helmet you see up there.  Variations on that theme, if you will.

1-  A more refined version of the standard infantry helmet seen on the rough armor concept.  Sketched in my pocket-sketchbook while sitting in a parking lot.  Of the several versions of the helmet I'd drawn up to this point, this was the first to feature the power-tube things hanging down from it.

2-  This is probably my least favorite of the bunch.  While I like the overall shape of it, the individual pieces of it don't really fit together.  It doesn't look like it would really work in three dimensions.

3-  Most definitely my favorite of these designs, this is some kind of commander's variant helmet, outfitted with an advanced target acquisition suite.  I'm still playing around with the color scheme, but for now, I'm going with a sort of pale iridescent material for the majority of their armor plating, with the face bowl section being matte-white.

The Corrupted are certainly the least-developed species in Novus Imperium, as they're also the newest.  You can expect more concepts for these guys at some point down the road.

Cheers!