Week 1 - Character conceptualisation and design

When it comes to conceptual art and creating characters, I am still trying to find what I like, what is "my style". That is why it was difficult for me to decide what to sketch. I started with a creepy-funny-weird skeleton figure, to have some fun at first and to warm up. It is inspired by Kiszkiloszki's character Death Fairy and Jack Skellington.

Although I quite like the character, I decided not to continue with it, because I think skull's face can't depict facial expressions as my character is supposed to and it also doesn't have ears.

For the next character, I wanted to try something aesthetically pretty and because I like owls, especially barn owl is beautiful, I tried to design a character based on a barn owl.

The owl girl has round face with big dark eyes with eyeliner and pointy nose, so she looks like the barn owl. First, I was thinking about making her to a fantasy character with feathery dresses or hoodie with wing-sleeves but I felt again that it's really not my style and it would also be too complicated to create in Maya with my skills. I tried to depict her as a modern girl who is stylish but also a bit nerdy (that is why I added books and glasses).

My last character, and personally my favourite one, is a girl based on the moon.

I remembered of Picolo's character Sun, which is one of two characters in his popular comics and I decided to go with the opposite - the moon. At first, I drew a fantasy one and a modern one but I continued with the modern girl.

While sketching the last picture of the owl girl, I was watching a new video of a slovak youtuber Cheryl and I really like her style so she inspired me to draw long straight hair and jumper instead of knitwear, although after some time I decided to go back to the knitwear and I also added a denim jacket, because these two pieces of clothing can be good for working with textures.

Extended research of modern girls characters:

My designs:

My character is not very stylised in terms of anatomy, she is more semi-realistic, but I think I should not change my style of drawing when I am going to try a new techinque. I do not really fancy very stylized characters especially when it comes to proportions.

The main question - why would I animate her in 3D? Why not live action? I did some research and I think she would be suitable as a character in a film such as Polar Express or The Christmas Carol, which are one of my favourite animated films, or even better as a game character in a game with animation style like Life is Strange, Lara Croft or The Last Of Us.