I started off my development with no real idea of where I wanted to
go with my project. As such I decided an abstract approach to start
thinking of different directions would help. The first picture shows the
result of a process where I created abstract icon shapes then sort of
Mishmash them together to create something recognisable. I noticed a lot
of the initial designs where leading me to think about body armour so I
went the rough of making abstract body armour designs with the
intention these might be for the Guards or Aliens. I was then planning
to break these down into simple shapes, similar to how body armour for
mountain biking etc looks.
From here I decided to do some thumbnails for the Aliens, looking at a
lot of reference for deep sea creatures. The designs were not really
working as there were no real links to the guards, prison, armour and so
on which was reinforced after speaking to my tutor. Id essentially gone
off on a tangent.
At these point I decided to start the prison guard designs and leave
the aliens for later, possibly incorporating my initial abstract designs
in some way. I started off by creating silhouette thumbnails for the
guard characters which can be seen below. Eventually a few stuck out to
me and I started quick sketching inner detail for them to come up with
some designs.
With the designs I was thinking along the lines of mercenaries whom have
been hired to work at the prison as specialist guards. Once I had a set
of 8 initial designs for each guard character I moved onto creating
some concept sketches. I started designing for the warden first
concentrating on fleshing out the design. Which led me to the below
sketch.
After speaking to my tutor again we came to the conclusion that this
character was far to militarised for instance the camouflage of the
costume which doesn’t make much sense in a prison setting. And that In
general all of my characters where becoming unique characters and didn’t
really seem like a unit. As such I have been working on toning down the
character to make him seem more like a security guard you would expect
to see in a prison. I liked the idea however that they were still
reasonably well armed as such I’ve kept the idea of having straps
buckles etc attached to the legs with a few side arms and pouches for
various things.
This is the current concept for the Head Warden character.
Ive tried to give him more of a set uniform, plain greyish black
trousers with a light grey shirt – which ive added lots blues and
yellows to because of my background and light source. Ive also added
hints of logo which you can see in the original size at the top right
hand corner of the page. I converted this into a smart object so that I
could distort it onto the uniform without pixelating it. (Wish I had
discovered smart objects sooner than this week so many headaches I could
of avoided lol)
Ive added some scaring on his face to give him some personality and
history, as well as making him a bit dishevelled to reflect his unhinged
state of mind which I assumed he would be in due to the traits
mentioned in his character description. Ive also decided to keep the
sunglasses motive as I think covering the characters eyes makes them
appear like they have something to hide.
I plan to design the other characters shown earlier in this sort of
fashion so that they all seem like they are members of the same prison
guard unit – Ive just named them The D.P.D which stands for Diablo
Police Department. Diablo off the top of my head is a name associated in
movies, television etc with aliens/the unexplained/evil etc so I felt
it fit. Id come up with something better but the focus is only on the
characters so this feels good enough to design from currently.