Final Concept Art and Character designs

Concept Art

These are my final concept arts that would relate to my board game if it were to turn into a Mobile phone app. I have basically done these in Photoshop, I illustrated the characters on their respective element and making them look like they are ready for an Invasion. 

SPIT-FIRE

Fire Demon

I have decided to use dark colours and shades of red and brown for this piece to show that the colour of the demon coming out from hell is projecting light to the soil. I have coloured inside the huge crack to make it look like a scorching hell, this helps support the back light for my character which makes it pleasant to see and used darker shadows on the foreground to give off a bit of depth. this gives off the feel of evil from my character.

NICOR

Water Demon

This piece took long to make, I have kept the mark making inspired from Jim Dine's work which shows the depth of my drawing. this helped it look more like a water element which I am proud off. I have used different shades of blue to show the light side of the water which reflects the sky and darker to show the shadow and to show the evil side of my art. At first you wouldnt tell that this is a friendly demon, it looks like its about to kill you and going after you.

I have not only focused on 2D art, I have decided to model 1 of my characters in Mudbox so I have a general idea how my character would look like in 3D. This idea / design can be used for my future Mobile phone app but this would be more on the animation side of the idea. 

GOLEM

Earth Demon

FINAL CHARACTER DESIGN FOR THE BOARD GAME

This is my final character designs which are all finalised in photoshop, I have matched my style to David Foldvari's and Jeremy Ville's work I have kept it simple, pleasant to the eyes with pen and marker feel to it. In my opinion this style has made my characters look menacing because of the black colour and especially the mark making which was taken from Jim Dine, this made my characters looks some how unique in its own style.

I have also listed down their Demon stats which shows their life points, attack points and effects on the game. this will be later used in the final design... I have decided not to create a separate card for the monsters because most people will just loose them. So I have thought of an idea having all their info's in the board game itself so it is easy for the audience to look at without having to shuffle things around.

Character Design

Character Design Principles

a character must benefit the animator/ artist showing that it is very understandable with its form. 

Think about the scale/ height of the character you want it to be may it be a giant, dwarf, elf size, etc... 

most happy characters are usually drawn with round edges because it is relaxing and flowing to look at whereas showing a triangular shape tends to show more of a menacing evil feel to it. a good example is this image of character design from alladin. 

as an animator we have to be able to move the form of our character if it is flexible to move in different angles. Think about the mass of your character, off-coarse the bigger and fatter the character design is, it should be a slow character because the more weight it has, the slower you move, unless you are playing a game with a cheat code with god speed :D The thinner a short you are, the less mass it has and it feels like your character can be blown by the wind

Simplicity is always the better, having a simple design character will make it easier for an animator to animate it with less detail, the more detail it has, the harder it is to control them as they turn around in space like the image below of the Beast from Beauty and the beast, the animators probably took time to draw all those lines and details. I'm not saying detail is not good, I myself love a little bit of detail to make my work stand out a bit more, its just the idea of simplicity is best especially when animating

Aesthetics, a pleasing balance of shapes.  some artists have a really good eye for design, Gene Hazelton designed the baby image below  and composed its features in a pleasing way because of his good eye of balance. he drew  the details with beautiful combination lines of curves and corners.

Chuck Jones Also has a Natural eye for design of pleasing shapes and forms. He understands the construction of his character using strong  contrast of forms, proportion and shapes so it is very easy to animate. A good example is this image below from Road Runner, it has a very is distinct and balanced designed characters.

The graphic and simple the character is, generally is considered more as a symbol than a character. In my opinion graphic designy characters are more suitable in advert/ commercials and short cartoons.

Personality is one of the most important principle of character design, when creating a character, you need to know what role is your character going to be like, is he a funny quirky looking guy, you will definitely draw him with a huge funny looking smile on his face which is more of an oval shaped  head to body. angry but cartoony looking kind of guy would have some triangular shaped facial features on a time glass figure just like Jafar from Alladin. the personality can be contributed from the voice actor.

MOOD BOARD

I have made myself a moodboard to help me design my character. At this poit, I still dont know what theme my game is going to be so I have pick some useful references from movies, tv series etc...

I have looked at characters that are menacing, cute depending on what personality/ voice I wanna show.

CHARACTER DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Here are all my character design and development I have designed on my sketchbook. I have decided to focus on designing elemental monsters for my game, I have even experimented on using different medias like painting and colour pencils. These designs are all inspired from my mood board, most of them look like pokemon characters and some Sonic the Hedgehog villains.