Kingdom Hearts: The addition of a Keyblade

Creating the Keyblade, the weapon in which the main character uses, was quite a challenge through the height of the weapon compared to the character. In order to keep the character within proportion of the figure, I used references from the game play of the second Kingdom Hearts game and character designs from 'The Artwork of Kingdom Hearts' by  Shiro Amano. Even though the art style was different to the work of  Tetsuya Nomura, it still gave me an idea of the Keyblade size compared to Sora. From this I was able to determine the length and width of the handle, along with the main blade of the weapon. The handle was tricky with the perspective that the hand was angled with as the hand needed to be able to hold the blade at a realistic position. I lowered the opacity of the handle to 60% so that I could draw the knuckles of the hand as if it was holding the handle. I did encounter a problem with the yellow within the glove and the handle, the only solution that worked was using the dark navy that was in the glove to draw a line to separate the colours.  

I also found it difficult to make the Keyblade standout compared to the rest of the silhouette design as I could not add another colour to be able to show the depth within the handle. In order to solve this problem I used the halftone pattern filter on photoshop to create the illusion of shadow. This was successful as the handle gave depth to the image and created a foreground and background in which made the design standout to the audience. The main problem I had with the design of the Keyblade was the Micky Mouse chain on the handle as I did not like how white the fill was however it was the only colour that worked with the rest of the colour scheme I had chosen. I did try to add a halftone over the white fill, to make the colour appear grey, unfortunately it stood out too much compared to the rest of the design making it the main focal point of the composition. I decided to leave the chain with a white fill as it did work however if I was to design the image again I would either try to incorporate a grey into the colour scheme or use the grey of a t-shirt for the fill of the blade and the chain. 

Crown detail

Size of blade

Halftone - shadow