ONE-WEEK CHALLENGE #1: Character Design

Week 2: Character Design Challenge

Hello and welcome,

This is a Group collaboration work between me and Alex.

The two charachter concept design are related and I'm thinking to do a third one to complete the set. the first character concept is the Human form for Layla that she assumes when is surrounded by human to taking care of the older as a geriatric nurse role (during day time).

the second character concept is her Sunrise/Dawn form where she turns into the 1st phase of her nature as a Sunflower, her transformation is in between human and nature form.

the thirs charachter concept (WIP) is her ultimate form in her original state and form, this transformation in a glowing sunflower helps her to stay in common with nature and be helpful for her partner Mr.Claw, she is in this form only in Night time.

this is the result after the first feedback, a geriatric sunflower. My insipirations about this character 2.0 was kinda of a mix between the first results plus some reminiscence from my first references. My first references came from my knowledge with pokemon and nature, luckly on my way to Alex place I found a garden with some sunflowers so I took some photos as a reference and I looked back on my project and see the diffrences, so I kinda took a diffrent approach and try to realize my idea in the first place. I did some research on what the "geriatric" does and basically he/she is a nurse that help/care older people to be in a safe place and live in a better place, taking care of their problems coming from age. The new Layla is a Sunflower geriatric that with her power coming from the seeds/nature has the power to cure and help other people, she's a mystic creature and her scope is to be strong enough to defend helpless people and taking care of them, she's a gentle creature born from a weird fusion with Sun's ray and human's will into a Sunflower, so her nature is still unknown (more or less). She's also a mutaform creature that can turn into a human form to hide her true form that she assumes when she feels threathed. She's paired with her counterpart (Mr.Claw) when she's powerless, because as a plant base creature during the night time she lose 50% of her original power source, so Mr Claw is here to defender and give her time to recover and be safe as well.

This week we've been paired in a two group team to work on the Charachter design week challenge, I've been paired with Alex Preda, I respect him as a creative because we had the occasion to be in the same class last year and I had the time to know him and see what he's capable of. After the brief I thought that meet up and have another brief it will work for both parts because we can share ours ideas and see what was the best option for the project, since we started this first year together without any previous knowledge on 3D like ZBrush, Maya and so on we both agreed that the right path was doing the project based on our illustration skills using references and Adobe Photoshop to delivery the project in time. We discussed a bit around the roles and the key words that we've been assigned, I get "geriatric sunflower" and Alex got "Mr.Claw", to be honest my key word shocked me a bit because I didn't know how to translate it in a character version at first, so it was a little bit tricky. Alex got a strong vision on the project right away, even if he had some struggle on the drawing part, but his vision was too powerful to keep carry to discuss on the brief, he saw what I was capable of and for his point of view he noticed that I was skilled in drawing beautiful girls so he tought that it was a the right path to follow (even if I suggested him that I probably I will go off brief), my first idea was to go more on a stylized sunflower's version, anyway in the end, between my part time job and following the lectures we both worked on the project and I ended up to drawing a beautiful girl with sunflower attributes that served as a geriatric and in commons with nature. My character was based on her power to heal people with her totally fusion with nature and with her path with the sun that she used to summon her powers as a healer attribute or as a weapon, the staff enanched her power and she used the power of the seeds (braclet) for various options, the tattoos is the path that she took to gain that power.

- first try, off brief.

I knew that Layla went off brief because she resambled more human attribute rather than a sunflower but I was happy on the end result so for now I decided to continue to follow the lacture and take a break from this project and learn as much as I could to then came back and polish this work.