My project for course: Concept art : Character design and worldbuilding - Kayna

CONCEPTUALISATION

I will tell you a little bit about my universe and the character before jumping into drawings. First, the world of EXODUS (a temporary name, I think) came from my own imagination and certainly not from my biggest inspiration: ✨Star Wars✨. In my other inspirations we might also find Spider-verse, Game of Thrones, Avatar (which one? both.), Persona Series, Overwatch, The Owl House and many manga and anime like One Piece and Dragon Ball. So it's time to tell you a little bit more about EXODUS.

THE WORLD

In the middle of the 22nd century, when two-thirds of the population fled the Earth, which had become far too hostile, some embraced a new nomadic way of life in order to survive. Thus reunited by their faith in the planet that saw them born. The Mother-World then gave them a power in return: that of manipulating an inexhaustible and green energy with bare hands as long as they cherish nature and life. These people, whose story is still being told centuries later, are the ancestors of the majority of the human population on Earth in the 25th century.

But they are not the only ones, rich people who were too afraid to leave their cradle set out to create a city capable of providing for their needs and their comfort at all costs until the end of time, even if it means destroying all forms of life on Earth if necessary. It's called the Ultracity.

So here it is for the World of Exodus. This Earth of the 25th century is great for providing grand and powerful natural environments or remnant of metropolises. And the evolved fauna might be tricky to handle.

Then I'll introduce you to my character, the protagonist of EXODUS (the only one with a charadesign in fact)

THE CHARACTER

Kayna is a fearless young nomad who dedicates her life to protecting her habitat. She is destined to become a priestess of the Mother-World among many others. Considered a prestigious title, only those capable of giving their lives to protect life itself are worthy of it. But for our Kayna, it is not enough to protect her family, her community, her planet. According to her, not destroying will not prevent others from doing so. Thus she considers Ultracity as the enemy of life.

So Kayna is young, rebellious, and above all eager to do something significant.

Finally, I'll present to you what triggers the beginning of our story.

THE TRIGGER

While a storyteller named Soa is passing through their community, he evokes the existence of two powers even more powerful than the one of the Earth. One from the Sun and the other from the Moon. However, the Matriarch is formal: the gift of the Sun is unnatural and therefore does not exist. On the other hand, the one of the Moon would have existed a long time ago and the archives evoke it. While Kayna tries to call upon the power of the Moon using these freshly stolen archives, she inadvertently invokes the gift of the Sun producing a fire ravaging the camp as well as the great sacred tree. Aware of being the cause, Kayna flees her community in order to protect her kind from herself. Soa, having finally found what he's been looking for all these years, guides Kayna on her escape, and thus their journey to Ultracity begins.

DRAWING: THE POSE

For the pose, I chose something in action, so she's walking. but she's also looking at the world around her. A world she loves. I took a low angle to emphasize her face and describe her as a little thing in a huge world.

DRAWING: THE CLOTHES

I based Kayna's clothes on an earlier concept of her. I add some things like the bandages around her arm and her waist.

DRAWING:... uh I don't know, I've started over

I wasn't satisfied by the stylisation I used so I decreased the opacity and drew over it.
The clothes are barely the same but the major changes are on Kayna's face. I've wanted something more inspired by Esben Lash style.

DRAWING: COLORS

I've followed the order presented in the lesson but color into lighting seems more relevant to me. I've added dust (and other textures) because of her nomadic condition and made little variations of some of the base colors to be more realistic.

DRAWING: LIGHTING

I used the same primary source as Even to emphasize Kayna's face (better in order to present a character). For the backlight, I tried the same as Even but it wasn't satisfying, so I opted for a lower source of light coming directly from behind her, adding a bit of mystery to her character.

DRAWING: RENDERING

And here we are with the finished work. I've refined the line work, added some details on hair, bandages and other textures. I've also used a layer on overlay mode to add a terminator between lights and shadows.

CONCLUSION

Doing this project was so much fun ! It was the occasion to go back to and develop my work on EXODUS. Thanks to the first part of the lesson I found really quickly the one thing I lacked: a story to put in this world.
Besides, the process presented was really intuitive and I was stunning by how easy it was to do the line art (which is really difficult to me normally). In general, I loved how there is no pressure in your process, it's all about patience.

I will certainly use this process as much as I can. And maybe I'll dig into Tegn ! ;D