Character Concept Art

This week, while working on my thesis my team is beginning to shift from mainly research to focus on doing more concept art. My skillset lies more in character art than environment art, so to play to our own strengths I decided to work on the character concept for the main character's brother, Rajju, rather than working on environment concept art as I'm able to work faster on characters.

Rajju had polio when he was younger, and this is signified by him having a crutch and a leg brace. While I'm very familiar with what crutches and braces look like today, and not much has changed in the general way they function, a lot has changed in their design and aesthetic. Making sure that the visual cues for the time period are accurate is very important for the continuity of the film, so I for the first part of the week I did research into period-specific braces (crutches actually haven't changed much at all in terms of design, the generic ones look exactly the same as they did 53 years ago).

I ended up finding a great reference, that has photos of a full turnaround of the brace:

[ID Copied from Alt Text: Front view of a vintage metal and leather leg brace designed to come just above the knee. End ID]

[ID Copied from Alt Text: Side view of the same leg brace above, where the brace is bent at the knee joint. End ID]

After I had found good references, I moved on to doing the actual character art. Another team member had already drawn the concepts for the main character, so I wanted to emulate her style in the brother's concept art so that everything stays as cohesive as possible.

[ID Copied from Alt Text: A grey scale digital drawing of a young boy with a bowl cut. There are four versions of the same character. The first is the character in an "A" pose. The second and third drawings are the character in an a pose and using a crutch on his right side. One version is an underarm crutch and one version is a forearm crutch. The fourth drawing is the boy in a t-shirt and baggy pants, using an underarm crutch and a leg brace. End ID]

This week my biggest issue was maintaining the motivation to continue on with research. I feel like I've been hitting a bit of a wall, even though there is still a bit more that needs to be done. Doing some actual concept art was really helpful in this regard, so I think having some more variety to the work I'm doing will help keep my motivation more steady in the future.