Art Test 1: Character Design.

For the first art test I have been tasked with designing a merchant/shopkeeper character for a Monkey Island game. I am required to design both a normal and "twilight" state.


I begun my character exploration with simple silhouettes:



 I felt these silhouettes were a little too abstract and didn't fit the theme or genre of Monkey Island well. I researched into the game more to get a feel for what kind of character would suit the universe more; the game is comedic and goofy in nature as well as somewhat "cartoony" due to its fluid use of squash and stretch within its animation. I then developed a second sheet of silhouettes, which I drew into slightly to flesh out some forms:

   

 I felt like these silhouettes had much more character and fit into the game's theme more. Originally, I quite liked the 4th silhouette - a hermit type character who was isolated within his shell and would retrieve items from within the shell before handing them to the player. After some minor iterations:



 I decided not to go with this idea. I felt like the overall idea was too focused on the place he resided rather than the character itself! Number 6 seemed much more fitting to my needs, a goofy octopus head?? Yes please! I iterated and developed the idea, tweaking and changing select sections of the character:

    

 These iterations really helped me solidify my idea and develop it further. I really enjoy the concept of a ominous, mask wearing character who shadily deals with the player and when in his twilight state, turns out to be a sentient Pearl who managed to hijack a dead human corpse to parade around selling items. I will create some more iterations of clothing and maybe more defining features?

Here are some quick clothing iterations based on the clam man who I will name "Ungor". I tried not to fall into cliche's too much with pirate or sailor themed clothing, instead I tried taking inspiration from a bunch of sources including diving suits.

These iterations are quick cut and paste designs where i focused on just taking the aspects I enjoyed and applying them to others. I'm quite fond of the first design and I might take that one further. I will quickly do some colour iterations using a colour layer next !

The first basic colour iterations! I tried to avoid too many clashing colours as I wanted Ungor to be quite a muted character, however after feedback from my peers I will do another batch focusing on making the shell a different colour to the clothing, whilst keeping more rustic and desaturated colours for the clothes.



These colours are much better and more suited to the character. I prefer the colours of 15 to the rest so I will create a call-out sheet from that!



The finished render for the standard state call-out sheet.





The finished render for the twilight state. I decided to keep the twilight state as more of a gag than an actual change as I feel it suits the humor and goofiness of the game. The change would mostly be personality wise, as I imagine the closed mask Ungor is much more ominous and shady, whereas the twilight state is much more nervous and exposed.

Now to the final concept painting - thumbnails!



I played around with various settings/ideas for the final concept painting, deciding how light would play a role in it and how to portray Ungor correctly.