Orgh Visual Glossary

Welcome to the Zeo Genesis Concept Art Showcase, where we give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we craft new models and factions!

This series focuses on our new faction, the Orgh! Possessing advanced technology, vast intelligence, and an intense drive to conquer and survive, even a half-grown Orgh boasts the agility, durability, and destructive power of a zeoform. The faction consists of the dominant, lizard-like Orgh species and their many servitor races, who have become bound to the Orgh through history or conquest.

For this first episode, we spoke to Dan Morison about building the visual glossary for the Orgh, which laid the foundations for the key details and themes that would run throughout the faction’s models and technology.

The Orgh Visual Glossary 

Dan Morison: The tag line for this faction was “Lizards in Space”—potentially a very easy faction to get wrong, as who wouldn’t imagine a dinosaur holding a gun? 

The other factions in Zeo Genesis were generally enclosed in smooth armor, so this faction allowed us to explore more textured surfaces.

When thinking about the design ethos for a faction, it’s a good idea to start with the “How” and the “Why.” The idea behind the Orgh was to juxtapose the natural ferocity and aggression that “Lizards in Space” can conjure up with their intelligence. The Orgh are incredibly advanced, but treat their technology like they would with any opponent that stumbles into their path—destruction, subjugation and assimilation. This manifested as technology being “contained” or “restrained” by clamps or bindings, with generations of design styles being forced together.

Originally, I envisaged the Antarchs as megalomaniacal paranoids. I imagined that in an effort to quash any competition from rivals, they would clone themselves, providing a legal loophole for challenging and ascension. However, as their race was so advanced, sentience began very early in the clone-egg, allowing them to tweak their own DNA as they developed. Those that would tweak their genes too recklessly would be malformed, and if they survived the creche, would go on to become the more cerebral, but weaker, Technocrat class. 

The double set of eyes are there to give them that alien feel, and the bone-spines on their crown give space for a bit of individuality. I’ve also drawn quite a few designs for a type of Antarch that has completely modified their body type, breaking up that “hulking lizard” silhouette, which hopefully will see the light of day at some point.

I also had fun creating a bit of visual language for the Orgh and their subservient races. The Orgh pictography was based on a set of jaws wrapped around a circle, representing a planet, sun, or “something whole” being consumed. The Technocrat language was based around Logic-Mazes that they use to enslave the “other faction’ technologies, while the Mulp written language needed to match their devolving state—simple, one-line gestures drawn with an ungainly appendage and dim mind.