Reflective Journal #2 - Reference/Mood Board & Thumbnailing

Mood Board / Reference Board: 

The references mainly consisted of general sci-fi concept art from DeviantArt, some specific designs from sources such as Star Wars, Evangelion, and Halo, and then some moody imagery from Alien (Ridley Scott). I tried to ensure we had a variety of styles and some more stylised references as well to suit the project (hence the inclusion of mediums such as Anime, and the bizarre proportions of characters from words such as Star Wars).

Initial Thumbnail Sketches (16x)

Silhouette Sketches:

These were the digital silhouette sketches created based on the paper ones, of some favourite character and vehicle ideas.

The chosen character is to be a scavenger with a vehicle as pictured below (of course, these are far from final designs, but they are the starting point we have.

The character is a scavenger/collector who observed insectoid, flying alien creatures and realised the versatility of their “design” (inspiring this bizarre vehicle design).

This will come through in the character - very visually busy clothing featuring many of the things that have been collected (samples, trophies, decals, etc.). They want to win this race to add more achievements and items to their portfolio.  Their best bet at winning is through the versatility of the vehicle - it can crawl on walls as well as along the ground with it's six mechanical legs, it has a thruster ability which allows it to be temporarily airborne (possibly even landing atop other vehicles to disable them). It can also fold away its legs and float on water. The racer is very experienced with piloting it, and abusing all of it's various abilities to give any advantage within the race.

Reflection:

As discussed in the feedback post I made seperately, I learned the importance of defining character motives and ideals as a core foundation - it made it much easier to elaborate and figure out more of what both the vehicle and the character should look like visuaully after that.

A problem I encountered was coming up with unique ideas for each thumbnail sketch, but I took the advice from the sketching workshop and just drew a single primitive shape first (like a big circle, or a stetched triangle) to create an attitude or central component, then worked from there.

I like the current aesthetic that is being developed (I think the vehicle and the character together are unique, and having a 6-legged vehicle is a fun gimmick), I think it will be important that we continue working to maintain a whacky/stylish aesthetic as that is more inkeeping with this task (but hopefully it can look cool at the same time). I think next it's a good idea to start experimenting with textural elements and with making little iterations by adding or subtracting little elements from both the vehicle and character design, to keep us moving towards settling on a final design.