I then process my normal map in Crazy Bump to extract various height maps.  In Fig03 you can see that I start with a base mud layer. psd files and simply repaint the layer masks for each individual body part.  Since the monster was broken into a few chunks I tried to used tiling textures with masks in my Photoshop files so that I could duplicate my. When texturing this piece I mostly used the Total Textures Trees and Plants pack.  The vines and trees were splines with displacement maps, while the hanging slime and lily pads were planes with a FFD modifier applied to easily deform the shapes. Most additional details like the vines, slime and trees were simple primitives. Once my mesh was UV mapped I brought the lower density mesh back into ZBrush and used Transpose to pose my mesh quickly.  I further reduced system load by processing a normal map to contain the very sharp details so that my working mesh would not be too dense.  After modelling the rest of my monster in ZBrush the mesh became too dense to work with in Max, so I broke the mesh into chunks: head, arms and torso.
![crazy bump lighting crazy bump lighting](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/fs/43d95912368857.562675b1b9f36.png)
 I brought my base mesh into ZBrush and used various stencils to add mud clumps and cracks to the model.
![crazy bump lighting crazy bump lighting](https://img.bidorbuy.co.za/image/upload/c_limit,h_448,q_auto:eco,w_448/user_images/617/1244617/1244617_130629182340_IMG-20130629-00637.jpg)
I modelled the base of the monster quickly in Max, only laying out the basic overall shape. When starting this image I wanted to create a monster that was integrated with its environment. I began sketching various monsters and ended up with this image which was a type of swamp monster built of wood, mud, grass and moss. After I came up with a decent sketch I browsed the Internet for tonnes of references. I usually make one large Photoshop image with a collage of my sketches and pictures that I find on the Internet to refer to while I build my art.