Extended Design: Initial sketches Hero

With the personality of the Hero and the consideration of the culture, I used the website, Pinterest to create a visual moodboard of inspiration from multiple artists. I was quite influenced through the designs of assassins, pirates and steam punk designs, I liked parts of the outfits and wanted to take inspiration from each one. The more I researched into different the artists, the more I gained other influences. The steampunk influence was engulfed by a medieval design with the use of the cloth and armor. I quite liked the idea of added certain parts of armor on the design, such as a metal plate on the torso or just the shoulder.

From this research I began to sketch straight into my notebook, only allowing myself 5 minutes to concentrate on each shape and line. I drew four characters each with different hair styles and outfits. I preferred the second design as I liked the curved lines in the hair and the baggy pants. The character wasn't quite old enough to be suitable for the story however with more development it could possibly work. I wasn't found of the facial features on any of the sketches. I wanted to stay away from the normal style that I tend to draw with as it is influenced by Japanese form rather than Western. For this animation I wanted to have a mixture of both Japanese and Western, I immediately know that this hybrid style will be more suitable for the story I have created rather than the normal style I use.

I drew sketches of heads on the next page, influenced by the style of Steven Universe and Fabien Mense. I preferred the bottom design and the design to the right of that, I really liked the eyes on these sketches. I went to develop this further influenced with the style of Ni no Kuni however I hated the body proportions. They were too squashed, and as I focused on drawing the full head first, the head was too big for the body.

With this in mind I scanned in the design start to photoshop. I felt that using digital media would aid me with easy edits to the design with tools such as transform on Photoshop.

Pinterest moodboard

Sketch

Sketch