The creative process itself presented some interesting
challenges: I started with a basic humanoid-shaped blot, initially in green,
but which I later changed to brown, as I decided to have him covered in rough
bark.
Clothing and tools
were out of the question, since they would both clash with the natural theme
and be visually distracting in this case, so instead I devised a structure of
darker-coloured bark to indicate a layer of living-armor and - again - to
emphasize the hands, as well as a network of strange roots that break up the
monotony and also allow me to add the team-specific green.
The head was initially intended to be a slightly different
shape: just a concave piece of trunk bark attached to the neck muscles, with no
cranial structure, and the face merely painted on in rough tribal-like
pigments. I abandoned this idea, however, and opted for the current version
which looks less like something of an artificial construct, and more like
something that grows naturally, and is thus seamless and unadorned.
Another noteworthy issue were the eyes, as a tree trunk cannot
develop structures which are spherical or independently-mobile, and so anything
of the kind would be unconvincing. I solved this by positioning a pair of roots
so as to merely suggest, as if at random, the position and basic shape of eyes,
where in fact there are none.