Life under the sea

Hello! Another character design project, yes!
We all were given a theme, well, in fact it was a word.
Reef.
We could interpret it as we wanted it. We had to do research on that word and come up with mood boards to stimulate our imagination process.

Here's one of my mood boards for this project. Form here I picked a few colours and created colour palettes.

Next, the character! I drew a few silhouettes very quickly, without thinking. Pure imagination process. I asked friends and classmates which one they liked the most and I had a tough time deciding one.

Most of the people went for the mermaid looking one, but I didn't want to do a mermaid. It is not original so I made something that was pretty as a mermaid but it wasn't one. Also, it had to be humanoid, in other words, no monsters.

I liked the idea of an ancient civilization underwater, like Atlantis. And so I went down that route.

Orthographic painting of the character. The final result looks a little bit different than this because I tend to change things along the way. The jellyfish head didn't convince me in the end. Also, the colours of the skin changed a little as well.

I had a hard time making a digital painting for the environment. It is hard to draw from the top of my head. It is like my mind has a very nice and clear image of what I want and then my hand cannot produce the same image. I got so frustrated that I left unfinished for weeks.

One day though, I went back to it and worked patiently and somehow I ended up with something decent.

And this is the end result. It is not what I imagined but it is all I can do with my ability at the moment. I will keep on working hard to become better and better!

AND....yes, we had to sculpt again...

But this time it wasn't too bad!

I really enjoyed this project, even though I got frustrated with my digital painting. But I can't be annoyed because I love drawing, it is something I need to do on daily basis, I only wish I could become better faster!


Carla Chanquia