WEEK 1: RESEARCH AND SILHOUETTES
RESEARCH
Seven deadly sins, according to the Christian teaching are seven vices opposing seven heavenly virtues. They are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. They are perceived as warped love, uncontrollable desire to satisfy primal instincts. Pride – corrupt love of yourself, Greed – the warped desire for material possessions, Wrath – anger and rage-fueled desire for vengeance, Envy – jealousy, the desire for appearing above everyone else, Lust – disordered love for individuals, Gluttony – overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste, Sloth – the absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.
The concept of 7 deadly sins already has been utilised by many different genres of media. From video games to films, to anime.
WRATH
From the 7 sins, I chose to design the Wrath. Uncontrollable rage feeding the need for blood and vengeance.
Wrath is instinctual, blood-thirsty. The character of mine is going to have an animalistic approach, like a merciless hunter, that carries their prey as a trophy for seeding fear and intimidation.
Wrath – exiled and cursed royalty, damned to wonder while trying to satisfy the uncontrollable hunger for blood and vengeance. She is blinded and controlled only by her primal instincts. No one came close enough to her for them to see if she is even a human anymore.
Crow – vengeaful bird, they keep and pass their grudges upon its whole flock. It remembers who wronged it.
Mask – to hide unseeing eyes, blinded by own rage and self-mutilation.
Royalty headpiece – an indication of the past. Things that she lost, the main motivation of vengeance – to get it back.
Claws – constant cruelty and rage, changes person physically too. She starts developing sharper nails. And not long after her limbs become weapon too.
8 Silhouettes
From the beginning, I imagined Wrath as a warrior, big, towering monstrosity of a man, wielding a huge weapon, that swept his enemies like it’s nothing. But then I experimented with different build and approach of manifestation of anger and malevolence. What if it is not a monstrous man, but a swift, silent, and deadly creature that attacks and pursues prey obscurely?
WEEK 2: ROUGHS AND REFINEMENTS
6 Roughs
Through the roughs’ stage, I experimented more with different types of approach. To blend a warrior, hunter, royal, and animalistic creature in one.
4 Refinements
For the final refinements, I have chosen rough 3 that I made for inspiration and development. I had a concept of her being like an exiled, punished or cursed Norse royal/god, who is now like a vengeful spirit, full of spite for tribe and community, who did that to her. She still wears her garbs and armour. She becomes more into a bird of prey, her legs morphed into crow legs and she uses crow’s feathers to symbolise grudge and vengeance. She wears an owl mask to hide her face and have a symbol of a hunter, striking in the night.
I based my visual research from Viking, Norse type clothing: tunics, fur, leather. Additionally, warrior hairstyle to keep hair out of the face and manage them thus. The sword is also from the Viking era.
She is a rogue valkyrie, corrupt as thrown out of the Asgard to plant seeds of bloodshed and revenge amongst the mortals.
Lineart
4 Colour variations
Final design
Character design sheet
I started developing this character with the main prompt of Wrath. I cycled through many different approaches in tackling it, from mountainous angry giant to petite owl lady seeking for vengeance. Through my research, I developed an interest to intertwine Norse culture into it. Its’ clothing, weapons, appearance. Thus using Norse mythology as inspiration to the developed narrative of her being exiled corrupt valkyrie condemned for the fate of uncontrollable bloodlust and vengeance.
Throughout my time working on this project, I enhanced my skills of character design development, gained more knowledge about the stages of design, preproduction research, techniques and approaches.
It was a great opportunity to experience broad idea frow and using it to narrow my preferences for the character I am developing. My brain sometimes sets on one specific idea so working using different techniques such as silhouettes of quick roughs help my brain not to focus on one specific character but experiment with different approaches and discover more diverse, more researched tones of the character.
I found that the most exciting but most challenging part of the design is to critically choose which design is best based not only on your own preference, but the style or main idea the character is based on. It is important to be guided by the brief given and not to stray away from it.