Statement of Intent
I have been interested in art and video games since a very young age having grown up around creative parents, specifically my dad who used to paint, design and do tattoos, and play games sometimes. I remember drawing comics for my favorite PS1 games and then later on designing characters for specific game and anime franchises, as well as creating my own original concepts for games or comics.
This is something that I've always loved doing and would like to develop my ideas and skills further on this course, as well as gain new skills such as 3D animation which is something I have never done before but have been interested in.
My intentions as a designer are to create concepts which are interesting and exciting to look at visually and hopefully bring something new into the games industry whilst doing so. I would like to share my characters and be able to tell their stories to audiences in an interactive way.
Gathering Inspiration
Kentaro Miura
Kentaro Miura is a manga author mostly known for his dark fantasy manga series Berserk.
The things that I love about his work are the European Medieval settings and concepts in the series, as well as his wide range of character designs. They're very varied ranging from young to old characters, merceneries, soldiers, archers, witches, to monsters, creatures, demons and all other inhuman entities. The series has been ongoing since 1989 so the amount of variation in his work is impressive and inspirational. All designs are very detailed too and no character looks plain and simple, things such as armor are all very thought out in every design.
From looking at Miura's character designs I can learn how to make designs practical and thought out in terms of the clothes and armor the characters wear, and what things they carry around/how they carry them. As well as make something that is interesting to look at.
Some of my pieces inspired by the works of Miura.
Daisuke Ishiwatari
Daisuke Ishiwatari is a video game developer, illustrator, musician, composer and voice actor who is most known for creating the fighting game series Guilty Gear. He designed the characters and wrote the storyline and music for the series.
His designs for Guilty Gear are all very unique, all of the characters have distinct apprearances and outfits, and I think that is the most notable and appealing about his work. He pays a lot of attention to details such as belts, buttons, and loops in his character designs as well as the wide range of fantasy-type weapons in order to create fun and unique futuristic-fantasy characters. The outfits and sense of style of the charcaters bring out their personalites which is important in design.
Ishiwatari often uses bright colors and dynamic poses in his illustrations. In addition, he tends to play around a lot with different angles and perspectives, which further helps show the characters' personalities through these artworks as the characters often look energetic and confident.
From this I can learn how to show my characters' personalities, not only through their general appearance, but also through their outfit designs and how they pose and carry themselves in illustrations.
Child's Dream Sequence
For this I am thinking of creating a short dream sequence based around a dark-fantasy genre so the dream sequence will be more of a nightmare/bad dream, It will be inspired by the classic fantasty genre in terms of design but with a few twists (some gothic Victorian inspirations?) for character and environment designs.
Dream outline:
A child finds himself in a dark, murky alleyway unable to move. His clothes are dirty and torn. He hears the rattling of heavy chains and scraping against the cold stone floor. The sound gradually gets closer and a dark figure starts being visible through the fog.
Figure more visible now, approaching. The child starts panicking but he is unable to make a sound or lift his body off of the ground. He's crying and his fingernails are digging into the dirt below him. It's a man in chains - thick metal collar and hands clamped together. He's missing his eyes and there's blood covering his face, its dark and you can't make out much but his presence feels familiar to the child somehow.
The child finally lets out a cry as the figure is within reaching distace to him and right in time a man in a dark, long cloak appears, a hat covering his face. He runs towards the boy and lifts him up, carrying him out of danger.
Developing Character Design Ideas
Character 1 - "The Hero"
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Some initial sketches of the last character to appear in the dream sequence, Initially I had a few ideas of what he could potentially look like and began to sketch out ideas for the hat/covering he would wear. His physical appearance was at first more akin to a dragon/reptile type person. And for the clothing I decided to go for more of a ranger look but I also had an idea to make him some kind of dragon knight.
His inspiration came from "The Hunter" from Bloodborne and Irvene from Berserk. For this character I wanted a sort of hunter/ranger look and feel.
Character 2 - "The Child"
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Some sketches of the child character. In his first initial sketch is on the left, he had a very basic torn white shirt but I quickly decided to change that and experiment with different shirts and bows - something that would be more ineteresting and fit better into a fantasy theme as I feel the initial design looked too modern.
The inspiration comes from Riquet from Mahotsukai no Yakusoku/Promise of Wizard and Joshua Rosfield from Final Fantasy XVI. Whilst my designs aren't as complicated and detailed as these I wanted to get across similar feelings of a young sort of "church boy" character whilst keeping the design simple.
Character 3 - "The Enemy"
For the character that appears to be an enemy I had an idea of him be based around medieval torture or a visible disease that took over his body so I experimented with some sorts of masks/torture devices/anything that could cover most of his face. Even though I liked the torture mask designs I decided to go for something simpler and ended up using the strip of cloth over his eyes.
For this character my inspiration came from Alexander Ashford/Nosferatu from Resident Evil Code Vernoica and Micolash from Bloodborne. My vision was to create a sort of enemy character who has been tourtured for a long time of his life, and may be human or undead.
Perspective Studies
Environment/Asset Designs
Using perspective techniques I have learnt, I drew up some designs for the area the dream takes place in which is a street that's inspired a bit by Victorian streets. The other design is a church building of some kind that might be visible in the background where the action takes place in.
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Various other sketches/studies
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Character Lineups
Exploring Colour
Final Designs + Line Up
Dream Sequence Storyboard
I developed my story a little from the point where the hero character saves the child character. I wanted to show the fact it's a dream so the scene changes after the story originally cut off and shows my character waking up still set in this fantasy world. I left the narrative open and it ends after the child mentions "him" referring to the enemy character.
Assignment 1 - Part 2 - Brief Proposal
For this part of the assignment I decided to respond to Brief 6 and work on my own project. I will be creating characters set in a fantasy world and portray a bit of the story in the form of a webcomic that I will be making a rough first draft of. The comic style will be influenced by Western comics as well as Japanese manga and Korean manhwa.
This sort of blend of styles (though still mostly manga influences) I felt from reading Devil's Candy, a webcomic by Writer, Clint Bickham and Illustrator, Priscilla Hamby, and is one of my influences for wanting to create a comic. It's a horror-themed Fantasy/Comedy/Slice of life webcomic about a devil boy and Frankenstein-like monster girl.
I enjoy the fact that even if it's a sort of horror themed comic, it's still very lighthearted and I want to carry out a similar feeling with my comic as well.
Starting to develop characters-
Character 1
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My first character is one of the two protagonists - I started creating them by sketching out different hairstyles as I had a clear view of what I wanted their face to look like. Their entire look is meant to be quite androgynous but still more feminine and noble.
Character Influences
Elisabeth Blanctorche from King of Fighters, Yuri from Fire Emblem:Three Houses, Vil Schoenheit from Twisted Wonderland.
I feel like these characters encapsulate the general feeling of my character well - I wanted to design someone who is nobility/feels noble. Parts of the outfit were also inspired by these characters, especially Elisabeth.
I then drew up an outfit and started figuring out a colour scheme for them and decided on the pink hair.
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I also worked on outdoor outfits for them and came up with some concepts.
I decided I liked the fur coat the best and liked "winter war commander" feeling it gave out, but I wanted to simplify this design a bit and decided to design the clothes underneath the coat as they wouldn't always wear the coat in the story.
I felt that I used too many warm tones in my previous design and wanted to contrast that a bit so decided to go with blues and whites.
Figuring out the clothes underneath the coat. One version is with the same belt and armoured boots and the other I simplified by combining the boots and belt from the first original design.
Some sketches explaing the shirt and hair. The shirt is two layers with a blouse on top of a black long sleeved tight fitting shirt that also covers a bit of the hands.
The hair is always tied up in a messy bun with a black ribbon. Normally it is shoulder length.
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Additional sketch showing how their sword is attached in certain scenes.
Here is the final design coloured and I will be using the version with the layer underneath in the part of the comic that I am going to draft.
Character turn around.
Character 2
For my second protagonist I decided I wanted to make a non-human character and my base idea for this was just "guy with horns big enough to weild a big sword". I came up with some first rough sketches. His appearance is meant to be a bit intimidating at first glance but personality-wise he is gentle on the inside so I tried to come up with a design that shows that.
Character Influences
Steak from Food Fantasty and Barawa from Granblue Fantasy.
Both are serious looking characters with a softer side to them and of course I was inspired by the horns and swords and then later on the waistcoat and leg straps from their designs.
When I was coming up with concepts for what kind of species he should be I drew up these sketches - changed his body type and horns. I decided that this is kind of humanoid speices with bovine-like features and also wanted to add a tail into his design. I felt like the clothes are very simple so I wanted to add a little more to that as well.
Figuring out how the horns look from different angles. They start from the middle of the head, curve around and then curve upwards into a sort of crown shape. His hair is dual coloured, white on top, brushed forwards to the front of the head and black underneath as a sort of undercut.
Here's my final design for this character - I made two colour variations but I went with the first white shirt, red waistcoat version.
Character turn around.
In this you can see his tail which is just black.
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Additional sketch showing how his sword is attached in certain scenes.
Character 3
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For this character I wanted to create a sort of mischievous character so I drew his designs as human and elf, and also drew up an additional concept of some kind of fox humanoid character. However I discarded that idea quickly as I liked the original concepts a lot - I felt that they gave out the right kind of energy for this character - mischievous and upbeat, and I went with the elf idea, I felt like with that I could make him look sort of longer and skinnier to conrast my other two characters.
His appearance is meant to resemble some kind of traveller and bard (with the cape) and he is also an archer.
Character Influences
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Rutile (Mahoutsukai no Yakusoku/Promise of Wizard), Niles (Fire Emblem: Fates) and designs for Adventurer NPC (Fire Emblem: Fates) and Trickster NPC (Fire Emblem: Awakening).
Rutile influenced the hair and earring and the rest of the designs influenced his clothing. Because he is meant to be a sort of traveller I thought it would be useful to look at the designs for the Adventurer and Trickster class in Fire Emblem games as they're very similar to the kind of concept I wanted to go for.
Here is the coloured design, with and without his cape and gear. He wears a translucent black long sleeved shirt under his waistcoat, two accessories hanging from his belt (left side- red and yellow material, right side - gold chain), and then a purple gem as an earring on his left ear.
The cape is all red on the inside, and then on the outside it has a yellow diamond-like pattern which I have shown on the turn around.
The back of the waistcoat is the darker red colour and then the gear he wears on his back is a belt with a quiver for arrows attached.
Character turn around showing the cape more clearly.
Setting
Since this is a fantasy story it takes place in a fantasy world with magic, and all sorts of environments like smaller villages, big towns with castles, mountains, and forests. It is inspired by classic RPG games of the fantasy genre such as Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem. For the bit of the story I wanted to draft out the scene is set in a forest so I wanted to explore that idea a bit.
I drew the forest the scene takes place in, the bottom image showing a figure for size comparison.This forest is meant to be a vast area with tall trees and I added purple/blue mushrooms to add to the fantasy feeling of this environment.
Final Character Designs + Lineup
Before I could start drafting out my comic pages I had to see the sizes of all my characters in comparsion to each other so I compiled this line up.
Reference Images
I took photographs of things that I find hard to draw for reference before I started drafting out my comic. There is a bit where character 2 grabs character 3's shirt and lifts him up so I took pictures of my hand grabbing a sweatshirt from different angles in order to help draw this. I also took reference photos from different angles of tall horse riding boots and heeled boots to help draw the characters' shoes.
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Imagining The Scene - Comic Draft
With my character designs and photo refrerences completed I was ready to start drafting the comic roughly. With more time I would start developing these pages. I decided to draft the first few pages of the scene where my two protagonists first meet the third character. The style of storytelling is inspired by Western comics as well as Japanese Manga and Korean Manhwa as they both tend to include more simple panelling of the pages than Western comics and are (usually) less focused on backgrounds unless they're setting the scene.
This scene is set in the forest I designed earlier and this short narrative follows my two protagonists travelling through it when they notice a group of possible enemies, character 1 splits up to investigate whilst character 2 "interrogates" character 3. When character 2 comes back and decides 3 isn't a threat, they leave him be but much to their annoyance character 3 actually ends up tagging along with them and travel through the forest together.