My friend Youness Mohtadi, an ex-classmate and also a very talented Graphic designer has kindly agreed to take reference pictures for my project, back in Marrakech. Check out his blog here. These have helped me a lot in terms of character and environment design as well as using them to put an animatic together.
For my Hero (The Pirate), I have decided to take some pictures of myself and make them silhouettes as it is a more effective way to come up with interesting designs I believe, I have developed some of them and added some clothing and props to get an idea of the overall shape.