2.1 Developed Research

Research Moodboards

With my project set, I moved onto developing my moodboards for my idea. First of all, I looked into designs for the characters that will be present in the cutscene. First of all, I chose to look into character design ideas, so I could gain inspiration. Then after the character focus, move onto storyboards, presentation and art style.

When it comes to angels, from research they are pretty consistent through and through. Large dove like wings extend out the shoulder blades and long flowing white clothing covers the body. Light blues and greys often use to showcase armour, and golds and rosy reds highlight the vast whites giving the design a splash of vibrant colouring. The designs are very elegant and carry a sense of grace all around. Features are beautiful and symmetrical and overall very humane looking, keeping them appealing to look at and implying a strong sense of good around them because of it. They have a much softer look to their demeanour due to how they are drawn with more corved shapes, even each feather of a wing has a slight curve to its appearance. Heavy amounts of jewellery and assecories such as necklaces, bracers and headpieces add a well preserved look to the angels, keeping them prim and propper. Their wingspan is usually massive; widely spread to showcase their power and help them keep afloat off the ground. Vast white feathers, occassionally given a hint of gold or blue to their colouring to add a personal flare to the character if their clothing also has highlights of those colours.

Demons have a lot more variety when it comes to their look. Curled horns, fangs and a tail are the most common features, closely followed by jagged bat wings that juxtapose the angels with their dove wings. Overall they have a humanoid shape to them, though can have many more unnatural features or be much larger in size. Fiery reds, yellows, dark greys and black are shared between the designs, the idea of chains is also shared between a few design I had come across. The designs are a lot more monstrous and fear inducing, and I do like the idea of designing the fiend character around the monster like appearance over the humanoid as a way to help distinguish between the two characters more and keep them unique from each other. Even if I decide not to fully embrace the monsterous side in the demon character’s design, simply experimenting with skin tone could help give off a drastic vibe compared to the angel character, expecially if I use more unusal colours like red or purple. This applies to eye colour too; blood red and piercing yellow are coomonly used for demons. Keeping the colours unnatural helps demonic characters stand out and look a lot more threatening. I especially really like the lavender shade of skin used for Mollymauk in the show Critical Role as it makes the character stand out so much more alongside helping his red eyes gleam much more effectively.

With my character designs looked into, I decided it would be a good idea to grab some reference for wings and horns, to gain a better idea on anatomy and perspective on a humanoid body. Dove wing anatomy for the angel character and bat wing anatomy for the fiend. Getting a better idea of each section of a wing and how it would rest and fold naturally is incredibly useful for character design and will help a lot for the final character boards, as I am hoping to pose the characters in interesting ways. Displaying the wings in a unique yet natural manour will help the character board that much more. I do really like the look of the bat wings resting over the body like a cloak and would really like to try and indule that as part of the demon character’s design. The different styles for horn idea is very intriguing and I like many of them so I will have to experiment around with then in my drawings. Curling the horns in a ram like look is my personal favourite though, as it’s enough to look out of place, easily noticable, but also not overdone. I also grabbed a clawed hand reference, which may be useful later for the demon character.

With character design and reference sorted, I then made my next moodboard centered around storyboards to see how they’re genuinely presented. Messy black outlines with differing shades of grey to show how close to the camera a person or object is is mostly shared between all the examples. The storyboards for the Kingdom Hearts summons are done in comic book style frames which help keep it dynamic and eye catching with arrows to help people follow the direction of a character’s movement. In the RWBY storyboards at some points the characters are colour coded blue or yellow to help them stand out in a crowded scene and to help signify who’s who. Then in there’s a fair amount to keep an eye on throughout the scene, each important layer will be given a colour. Like how the frame for Tangled the Series has the character white, walls light grey, then the platforms the character is walking over a dark grey. This keeps the same mostly throughout the scene to help transitions between frames easier to keep up with on what is what in the shot. I’ve also noticed that walls and floors seem to be commonly outlined in a grid like way; maybe as a way to understand the shape of the wall or ground, and how centralised the characters are on the environment.

Now I moved to deciding my art style for this project. As I prefer to draw with a heavier cartoon aesthetic, I am going to embrace that style completely in this project. Large rounded head, thin neck, circular eyes with a dotted pupil, small button nose, skinny limbs, simple body shapes and easy clothing designs which are not too busy. Characters fall under the 3 colour rule which helps the characters look clean and keeps their designs pleasing to look at. At least 1 colour stands out to be a character’s signature colour, like the blue in Dipper’s hat and Mable’s pink sweater in Gravity Falls, helping them stay in mind. I will practice drawing full bodies in this style as it may take a few attempts to work out the proportions, especially as cartoons have the knack to over exaggerate features. The skinnier arms and legs alongside the elbows and knees barely have any attention drawn towards them and are drawn slightly more subtly. So practicing how to draw in this style will be a learning experience with making sure everything molds together well. I also think this art style will also work really well with the storyboard aspect of the project too. As it keeps the characters simplistic while being recognisable shapes, so it will make the storyboards easier to follow.

For my final moodboard, I decided it would not be a bad idea to gather environment ideas for where the storyboards take place. At first I considered a lush woodland landscape, yet feel that would be a little generic. So after a little thought I decided to keep the woodland environment, but focus more on a winter themed setting. I felt this would be interesting to design an environment for a fight around. the thought of the scuffle depicted in the storyboards to happen on a frozen lake I feel adds an extra layer of tension and could lead to interesting choreography for the storyboard. I gathered images which help show how snow clings to the landscape, snowfall and a frozen lake, with the idea that a snowy forest opens up into a clearing with a lake within it.

I looked strongly at my art style moodboard and decided to practice putting it to paper. My first attempt wasn’t great as I am used to be very messy with my sketches and I felt I made the body way too long. That combination left the art style attempt looking off. So I decided to try again and try to keep my line work neater.

I practice drawing out the head first, so I could get an idea on where the best place to start would be, how big to do the eyes and pupils, where about to put the face features and how to keep the hair simplistic alongside it. I then tried a few expressions with the eyes to see if I was happy with how I can work with something so simple looking for something quite hard to convey. I think I’ve got the concept of expression with this eye type understood, but will need to practice it to properly understand what pupil size and eyebrow placement work best for each expression.

I then tried drawing myself in a full body. I had a good idea on how the head worked at this point so that was easier to do than the last full body drawing attempt. I decided against my usual sketchy lines and went for short, sharp lines and went with the flow more or less. This approach I felt works so much better for this art style and helps strongly showcase that cartoon aesthetic as it looks a lot more clean and while simple, it’s very pleasing to look at. I worried when it came to the legs slightly, as it’s my least favorite part of someone to draw, but using this style makes it a lot easier for my own sake. I am much happier with this second attempt than my first and using it for my project will be a lot of fun and a learning experience for sure.