Character Art Direction

Below are examples of the character reference I used for this project. I tried to stick with a similar style range of vibrant colours and simple shapes but I also chose some outside the range that had a design that I though would look well adapted to the style I had in mind.

The human character is mostly naked so I wanted hair that would stand out and make the design less boring. I also wanted a skinny body type because I think it is a good contrast to the previous design form of a strong ape.

 (Pablo Hernadez, MarssArt, Sarah Harper, Jermaine Jose)

For the Ape I wanted to focus on the huge ears and feet for hands aspect of the design. The top left image got me thinking of making him a bit more beast like in design almost like a Yeti.

(kevin merriman, Jamie Hewlett, MarssArt, Andre Maier)

For the Dog stage I wanted the design to look a bit like a Tasmanian Devil. I like the front heavy shapes in the bottom two images and wanted to go with a similar build. I also want to try capture the quirkiness of the character in the far right.

(Hollie Hibbert, Melissa Van Der Paalrot, Partrick Osborne)

For the sea creature I wanted to have a design that was both ugly and cute, something your not quite sure of. I feel having both elements in the design will help add to the scenes with this character. (The beautiful opening when life is being created and the scene where the character devours a helpless egg)

(Hollie Hibbert, Juan Casini, Sam Nass)

Background Development

Dean Gordon (DG) will be doing the backgrounds on our project so we talked and settled on a similar style to the ones Scott Wills did for samurai jack. I wanted to get a few images for each location and send them to DG so he understood what kind of visuals I had in mind for the project.

For the first location we settled on a red palette. The idea is to arrive on a desolate planet that is destroying itself with molten lava and and acid water.

(Loc1, Red)

In the second location the acid water transforms into fresh river water and the character emerges into a lush green jungle full of plant-life.  

(Loc2, Green)

The third location is the only one to have a slow transition so we went with a colour close to green, yellow. We then decided on an Arabian theme which felt like a good way to ease into civilization 

(Loc3, Yellow)

For the last location we went with a SciFi city set a night time so we could do a Pink and Blue colour palette to pop out from the rest.

(Loc4 Pink /Blue)