As I’ve mentioned here and there, I’ve spent the last two years developing an original story inspired by a small Origins+Empires server a few friends and I started planning. The more I developed plans for my empire to be a sprawling overgrown cityscape of ruins and stone framework inspired by the nether, the more I built up this backstory for the character I wanted to play, a small deerfolk boy named Esra. From there, and over months of working and reworking the story and its characters, I’m proud to say I’m coming up on a 100 piece gallery for my Masters Exhibition to display this story in the form of a song-inspired comic, titled: Souls in the Sand.
Over the next month and beyond the date of my exhibition in April, I wanted to start sharing my work here! I thought it would be fitting to first share all of the concept work I did for the characters last semester as I took each character from their old lineup and reworked them from scratch to see if there were any designs I could make more unique or appropriate for the story. This process consisted of four stages: silhouettes, full-body mock-ups, face and head shapes/designs, and experimenting with the final characters’ designs with a set of unique expressions that best fit their personalities and narrative role.
Since each character was reworked separately, the “new” concept lineup is a little disjointed (and some of the characters’ faces actually ended up different from their full-body designs), but I thought it would be fun to line them up to compare the overall cast to their old designs. With each character(s) I post the concept process for, I may share little bits of the work I’m doing or talk a little about their narrative roles as I go, but for now, have Esra!
I know I don’t post original work here often, but I wanted to share parts of this journey with you guys because it’s been very meaningful to me! And I hope all of the work I’ve been doing may at the very least serve as a bit of inspiration or encouragement for us to keep making silly minecraft stories, to keep drawing the characters we love, and to keep being creative in whatever way is meaningful! <3
still working loose and sketchy, but figuring out layout and proper perspective. You can see I changed where the camera sits, instead of focusing on the tape recorder I dropped down to the floor to show more lotion bottles! I also moved the waxworks hands up higher, to make it look like they're reaching for Jon!
3. Very blurry, because I copy the picture and shrink it WAAAAY down to block in the lighting. I want to make sure I can tell what's happening in the picture even if it's teeny-tiny.
4. Lineart! Everything is split into different layers between foreground (table, bottles, big hands), middle ground (Jon, chair, spotlight) and background (ooooh all those waxworks)
05. Mattes! Nice solid colors behind each item, also in their own layers so it's easy to edit later if i want. And finally--
06. Lighting! I put big soft shadows on the left hand and lower sides, to tone down the "visual noise" there and put a nice bright highlight on the star of the show. I want viewers to look at Jon first, then follow the hand to the table, then down to the bottles on the floor. And while I want the bg dimmer, I also need it visible enough that if people study they can see it alllll the horrors