Concept Development for Digital Application
The Assignment
To my understanding this assignment consisted of developing and presenting a character, a prop relating to this character, and an environment consistent with the setting the character existed in. We were expected to be able to present a prop sheet and beauty shot, an environment shot, and a character sheet and beauty shot, as well as any development sketches. We we were allowed to use any art media we wanted, traditional and or digital, and we could choose the themes we wanted to work with. There were few restrictions, which is always fun.
Initial Research and Scrapped Concepts
The first thing I did when starting work on this assignment was consider what I wanted to work on. Since I had the opportunity to pick the theme myself I wanted something I could have fun with. The first, easiest decision was that I wanted to create a female character, mostly because there’s a general lack of them. Bonus points if she is not a young woman, white, or conventionally attractive.
Some of the first ideas I had included;
- A middle-aged paladin type character with curly blonde hair, a devastating stutter, and an even more devastating proficiency with long spears, in a fantasy medieval setting (I know, tired, but I thought it was cute),
- A terrifying mermaid who collects body parts (think crooked, alien-faced, and I wanted her to decorate herself with teeth),
- A film noir styled scenario wherein a little girl’s twin brother has disappeared and she begins to suspect the father to have hurt him in some way (you would play as the girl if it were a game),
- A pirate queen.
I kept starting mood boards and then scrapping them again. While I was googling different things trying to create a mood board for the mermaid, I found a picture of some spectacular scar makeup and somehow latched onto that image. It fitted with the TYPE of character I wanted to create. Eventually I found a painting of a woman handing a vial of brightly coloured liquid to a young man in huge, fine armour, and that’s when I decided on the alchemist theme. After a ridiculous amount of research I decided there would be supernatural elements to make the alchemy more interesting and more flashy, she would be a scholar and a woman of high status, and the setting would be loosely based on early renaissance Italy, considering the scientific advances of the time. Science was still a bit of a spectacle around then, and would blend better with the supernatural element, but it was still accepted and admired enough for someone to gain respect from. Adding all these elements together I figured my character would be highly educated, possibly noble, and a no-nonsense, hard kind of woman. I also found paintings of finely dressed women commanding scribes and workers, as well as one painting of a man dressed all in black, performing flashy alchemical “tricks” in front of a woman on a throne and a gawking crowd.
The Character
So I wanted my character to be head of the royal alchemy lab, a shady character who you’d maybe not entirely trust, but have no clear reason to mistrust. Someone who did her job well enough that no one really wanted to question her methods, and coming from a family wealthy enough to put her through the best education, as well as noble enough for her to be believably employed by royalty. She would possess a slightly sociopathic streak and be prone to anti-social behaviour. She would seem vaguely inhuman, look slightly “wrong”, but not alarmingly so. If she were to be put into a game, as a quest-giver most likely, I didn’t want the player to walk in and go “hey yo who the hell hired this woman she clearly starts her mornings by consuming the flesh of infant children”, which just ruins immersion, but I wanted her to be uncomfortable to look at. She should make your skin crawl. Her life would revolve around her science. There would be a lot of shady dealings going on in and around her lab. Her very, very influential lab.
The Prop
I made several prop mood boards before I found something I felt satisfied with. I googled lots and lots of alchemical equipment. Both fantasy-inspired and 100% real instruments, mostly from Europe. Eventually I found pictures of show globes, highly ornate “symbols” traditionally hung outside of pharmacies to sign that they were, well, pharmacies. This practice was most recently seen in America around the early 1900s, but I decided to use show globes anyway, because they were big and shiny and bright, and so very very pretty. They fit with what I wanted. Initially I wanted to just decorate the environment with them, but figured I’d incorporate them into character design, and she would wear it on her person in some way.
The Environment
The lab. I wanted to show what the lab looked like. Lots of apparatuses, questionable ingredients, assistants, scrolls and books and high pillars. Expensive but well-used. I’d already done lots of research that I could use for the lab, while looking for a suitable prop.
At an early stage I wanted a huge boiler in the middle of the room, but this later developed into a huge glass container. That would be the center of the room.
Designing The Alchemist
I had a slow start designing her outfit and her hair/headdress. There were so many options. I have a huge moodboard with just lots and lots of early ren and late gothic fashion in Europe. The dress needed to be that of a noble, wealthy, educated woman, but one who cares little for finery and who does a lot of hard work. The apron was a given from an early stage, although I explored other venues. I did some sketches to settle on a silhouette, and liked the “pregnant” dress best. It puckers around the high waistline, sometimes there would be a small cushion just under the waistline in the front, making you look, well, pregnant. Another thing I was dead set on including was the type of sleeve with fabric welling out of little panels. I drew some different ideas, asked a few friends for help, but didn’t find anything I really liked. For these first concepts I worked in colour, which proved to be a mistake. No matter what I did I’d screwed up the values from stage one, and the result was messy, boring, and samey. I scrapped them all and started over with grayscale, focusing on value rather than colour. This worked much better. I only created two concepts this way before I fell for one of them and decided to keep it. I created some simple colour palettes and tried applying them, posting the results on facebook and asking for input. I then tweaked and reposted before I decided. Towards the end I also added gloves to make her even less approachable. Also, it obviously makes sense with her handling probably toxic things every day. I also modified a historically correct garment she was wearing into a sort of cape.
The process with the hair was similar. I did a ton of designs for her hair and headdress, posted it on facebook asking for opinions, and tweaked. Mid-way through working on the hair I decided the face I’d previously painted was not weird enough. I tried a bunch of new colour palettes, each giving distinctly different impressions of her as a character, and ended up going with this very raw, fleshy, pink look, and white hair. It emphasised her facial scarring and made it look as if she’d gone through some very unusual things.
For a while she was actually bald in my mind, but I eventually added hair, as I felt she was still creepy enough with it, but I wanted it white.
After face redesign I did another batch of hair and headdress concepts, and finally decided on one that seemed both practical and fine enough, keeping the hair in control with minimum upkeep without making her look less distinguished.
The prop development was very similar, I drew up a ton of silhouettes and asked for input. I went with a bright turquoise shade to pop out in the character palette without breaking it.
The environment was only briefly in actual development as it was the last thing I did, and I ended up rushing it and not working on it as deeply as I would have liked. However I did a few brief thumbnails and decided on two floors, and then the giant glass bottle would go from ceiling to bottom floor. The fumes from the contents of it would go straight outside. Like a toxic, magical chimney. Probably the birds in the area are hideously mutated. I did little sketches of a few of the apparatuses to be found in the lab, and added larger versions of the show globe she wears around her neck on one of the walls. I added in the floating glowing rocks to provide ambient lighting and a magical atmosphere.
During development I also gave the alchemist a name - Godelinde Traugott, a christian German name. I enjoyed the irony. I decided she was German while doodling her in my sketchbook and while drawing out her expression sheet. I heard her voice in my head as decidedly German, and I felt like it fitted. She would be a (fantasy) German noblewoman who moved to (fantasy) Italy because the sciences were more advances and more widely accepted there. She would have gladly severed all bonds with her clearly quite religious (to name their child Godelinde) family, as soon as she had the means to make her own money.
What I Have Learned
1: Lines are a waste of time, most of the time. It was useful to me to sketch out things initially, to define clearly to myself what I wanted, but when actually painting, big brushes were much more efficient and saved a lot of time.
2: But it’s important to make absolutely sure that everything reads correctly and is clearly defined, even to a viewer with no previous context.
3: I should do value studies first when designing something, and think about colour second. Otherwise it’s easy to end up with a confusing mess. Lead the eye properly with neat, effective value designs.
4: I should make more thumbnails/drafts than I think I need.
5: Keep colour palettes as simple and effective as possible. Don’t stray too far.
Conclusion
Overall this was a very fun project to work on, and I enjoyed it immensely. I especially enjoyed painting digitally again, as I’ve never properly explored that before. There’s a lot that goes into concept development and I feel really comfortable doing it, although obviously my execution needs a lot of polish. The end result was a little disappointing to me, and I’ll be honest, I’m upset with myself for not going as far with it as I wanted to. Nothing new there, I guess. But we’re all our toughest critics. Most artists I know are prone to making themselves absolutely miserable about the shortcomings of their own work. Nevertheless I worked really hard, and I’ll do better next time. It is clear by now that artistic skills are not enough on their own to create good visual concepts. This was definitely a learning experience.
