Hello to everyone reading the Bayonetta blog. I’m Kazunori Tazaki, a designer in charge of modeling on Bayonetta. I’m writing on the blog to tell you about some of the Infernal Demon models that you summon during the game. Infernal Demons are summoned when Bayonetta uses her magical powers to their greatest potential, and we use their powerful attacks to obliterate Bayonetta’s enemies as the highlight of a scene. Another important point is that Bayonetta uses her hair as a catalyst to summon these demons, with her hair actually accounting the majority of the bodies of these beasts. Along with conceptual designs, I took those elements into consideration as I create the models for these creatures.

This is Gomorrah. It is the first Infernal Demon summon you encounter in the game, and even though the initial concept design and final version of the model are a bit different, I think it gets across the idea that the beast is being restricted inside Bayonetta’s hair.

This model was the result of much trial and error, but once we arrived at its design, we were able to use it as the foundation for modeling the other Infernal Demons.

Next up is Malphas. Unlike Gomorrah, it is designed so that its entire body is visible, thus allowing it to move around freely. I made the length of the hair a bit longer than the design, making sure that it seemed like a demon being controlled by Bayonetta’s hair, and not the demon’s real hair.

Actually, at first when I tried to make a short hair version, it ended up looking like a normal crow… (Whoops.)

When modeling, the visual impact of the design becomes very important, so with the Infernal Demon summons, I paid special attention to the epic sense of scale and details when building out the models.

For instance, it is easy to imagine the beak being used for attacks, so I made sure to up the level of detail in the face.

Sculpting the model in ZBrush and then applying the normal mapping is quite fun. After all, it is where you see the most visual rise in quality during the process.

Hair tends to be very polygon intensive, and I also want to make sure that the detailed parts get their fair share of polygons as well, so I work towards a good balance. Including the hair on Malphas, the demon has a total of around 40,000 polygons. It actually makes Malphas one of the less polygon heavy Infernal Demons.

Once the body for the Infernal Demon is complete, I go to work on modeling the hair for when it makes its appearance.

This is what it ends up looking like. I imagine how the hair would form the creature, and make the flow with polygons. I created the model so that the hair would flow around Malphas’s body, as well as manipulating the coordinates on the hair texture so that it would make it seem like the hair was appearing out of thin air, then I’d handed it off to an animator to make it actually move. With the appearance animation happening simultaneously with the motion I had the animator add in place, it ends up looking very, very good. Then, once I have the special effects, like a magical portal, added on to the appearance animation, we can say that the Infernal Demon’s grand entrance is complete.

It might not be the simplest thing, but this is how we brought the Infernal Demons to life. Even now, I am creating the demons as I imagine how you will summon these beasts and unleash violence. Also, there are other Infernal Demons that you can summon, and I’d love to share them with you, but I think it is best to let you look forward to getting your hands on the game instead. Sorry.

Until then, I am working very hard to make sure that my work lives up to your expectations. I hope you will all be rooting for us to succeed!

(NOTE: Higher resolution versions of the concept art in this post can be found on the PlatinumGames Inc. Flickr Page)

Finally, a reminder that the deadline to enter for tickets to Little Angels in San Diego on July 24 is tonight at midnight EST.