Create a World: Character Creation

Today our team sat down and looked at each of out ideas and decided that we should go for a more simplistic design so that we are all able to draw it but to also keep it dark since the world is Dantes Infirno. We also decided to change the general idea slightly, instead of the tree being actual hell where evil doers go to be punished, the tree is almost like a ‘wishing tree’. It can be summoned through rituals or appear at a certain time of year. Humans can then enter the tree and take on a challenge set by the rings gatekeepers, if they succeed in the task there wish will be granted but if they fail, they will be trapped in the tree for eternity and become part of the landscape.

To help me figure out a style I looked up Tim Burtons Nightmare Before Christmas as a reference and found that it was really useful for this project and the sort of style that our group could go for.

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These are the designs that I ended up going for when drawing up Gluttony and Fraud using my Wacom tablet;

 

and their rotation;

I also cleaned up the lust sketch that I did;

Finalised Characters:

Gluttony by Rebecca Thompson

Fraud by Rebecca Thompson

Anger by Michelle Beggs

Greed by Michelle Beggs

Hersey by Dervla Hillan

Treachery by Dervla Hillan

Lust by Dervla Hillan

Violence by Megan Conlon

Limbo by Megan Conlon

Create a World: Planning characters

Our team came together and thought that maybe we should do the characters of the gatekeepers rather than the actual people that end up in hell, the people that end up in hell would be portrayed through a soul possibly.

The 9 rings of Dantes Inferno and what each character would be a mix of human and animal. These are what we though would suite each of these:

Vestibule – Skeleton

Limbo – Ghostly humans

Lust –  Spider

Gluttony – Toad/Frog

Greed – Vulture

Anger – Bull

Heresy – Cat/Panther

Fraud – Fox/Wolf

Treachery – Lizard/Raptor

Violence – Snake/Rat/Goat

I looked at the different character models from Tera Online which were a really great help in figuring out the design of each other the characters that we could get ideas from, especially as Tera has a wide range of characters. You can see some of these characters in the videos down below, i also found these very interesting as you got to see how they have made all the characters move;

Create A World: Switch Over

After creating the basis our world all the groups had to then present their world to rest of the class as we were going to hand off our idea to a completely new group which is sad since we’ve been putting our heart into this but its also exciting to see what the other groups have came up with and what we will be working on next, definitely a great way to get your creativeness flowing.

Our group put all that we had done on our sound wave world up on the board making sure that they had enough to work with and understand what we were trying to go for with our world. We were picked first to present, presenting is definitely something I am not good at but luckily my team mates were on the ball and we were able to give a great explanation of our world.

After we saw everyone else’s wonderfully wacky presentations of their worlds all the groups were then changed about so that we were in completely new worlds. I have been placed into Dante Inferno’s Tree, which is a tiny hell world inside a blood wood tree stump. Each circle within the tree represent the 9 rings of Dantes Inferno while the outer part around the stump called the faerie ring is limbo, where the human or living being has done no wrong or right within their life.

Team:

• Michelle
• Megan
• Dervla

I started researching Dantes Infirno to become more familiar with their project and I looked at the original groups blogs so that I could see their research that they had done.

This project instantly made me think of the game Diablo III: Reaper of Souls because it is about hell trying to take over the earth and attack heaven, so Diablo combines the 7 deadly sins into himself so that he has a greater chance to take down heaven.

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As I was researching I also remembered the Constantine comics and remembered there was a part in the first issue where Constantine had to go through each of nine circles of Dantes Infirno which I thought was a good way to see how they represented each of the rings, as well as the character design for each ring.

After lunch we came back and learned about character building, personally I found this really insightful as I am not very good at coming up with my own character and making them original, this will definitely help me with that and become more original and be able to learn different drawing styles.

One of our tasks were to come up with 2 character designs related to the world that we were assigned to and try to keep it in the same sort of drawing style as everyone within the group, we were going to go with a sharper drawing style when drawing our characters. So our group picked 2 out of the 9 rings and I chose Gluttony and Fraud, we had started to think about what each character would look like and started to think that if the characters were further into rings they would be more deformed and animalistic.

My 2 quick sketches of Gluttony and Fraud;

And a quick sketch I did of lust, based off Dervlas initial sketches, using my tablet;

I also looked at a local photographer, Gareth Shaw, who took this photo and pointed out the areas that represented the seven deadly sins in Belfast which I found to be really interesting.

Sloth being that even though people live in town they still drive places even though they could walk, everyone is becoming lazy these days. Greed being the wealth of Belfast, people are becoming more and more money hungry.

Pride being the pride of Harland and Wolf and being proud of the Titanic even though is sunk and killed millions of people, they are still proud that it was made here. Wrath being the troubles that go on within Belfast and still goes on today even though its been going on for years.

Gluttony being the countless number of restaurants, cafes, fast food restaurants and bars that are being opened within Belfast, more and more people are taking in substances that we just do not need rather than limiting ourselves and looking after our body’s.

Envy being the businesses within Belfast that are constantly competeing against each other to be more successful than the others, even to the point where they are making the smaller businesses shut down. Lust being the temptations within in Belfast, how businesses use models to lure people into their business and spend money.

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