Introduction to Character design

During the first class we were asked to draw a character from two words, my ones were: Arabian-knight Alien.
I am thinking of him as a Villain, who was a normal Arabian-knight somewhere in Egypt who got bitten by some sort of creatures that made him turn into half alien.

After doing the first drawing, I was told to stay away from online references and rather have a look at real life influences such as Lizards and desert dwelling animals, this was a very useful advice and makes the character looks more personal and unique.

2nd Attempt:

Narrative: Final Influence maps + Colour palette

Knowing that our idea is composed of four different time periods, which means four different art directions/styles, we were thinking of finding a way to work out the transition between each scene using for example a colour palette from scene that would match scene 2 in order to fit together.

Below is an example.

Narrative: Influences and Initial sketches/Concepts

These are some influence maps about the different eras of our story to help us get an idea about our art direction. At this stage we are still trying to find our way around the different art directions we are using.
I have also done a quick sketches and experimented with ink and water colours as well as adding some grunge layers to get that expressionistic mark making touch which we are going for.


Style to use for the 21st Century Era: Some sort of grunge texture, expressionistic.

Style to use for the 1980's era: Bright colours.

Style to use for the 1930's-1940's era: Art deco This style if often characterised by rich colours and bold geometric shapes. 

Style to use for late 19th Century: We were thinking of some sort of graphic novel style, line art and mark making touch to it.

Initial sketches and concepts 

Next step is to produce concepts and a detailed storyboard enough to visualise our chosen art direction in order to make sure the styles fit and the transitions between the eras work properly.

Narrative: Script- Draft1

Draft1 Script 

Narrative: New Ideas

After discussing our ideas with Alan, we realised that our ideas were a bit too packed and needed more than one and a half minute.
So my group decided to move on and look at inventions such as the Phonograph.
I did a research on the recording devices to find out more about it and how they affected the society and our culture.

Recording Devices 

Digital Painting Practise

Just a little composition to practise line, perspective and black and white levels.

Narrative: Initial Ideas

Concerning the narrative ideas, I have watched a documentary about the Industrial revolution which has helped me a lot to broaden my knowledge about this subject. 

Idea 1.

The character is a man who is affected by the revolution, lost his job because of the machines that took over.
He started the Luddites movement which used to meet at night and start destroying machines and inventions.
The man realises the machine brought some positive changes to his life, such as taking the train to visit his family. Furthermore, he realises the movement spread across the country and arrived where his wife and kids are working, this resulted in the death of his family, leaving him miles away from their bodies.


Idea 2.

The Age of Enlightenment which was a cultural movement of intellectuals which resulted in founding the Lunar society in which philosophers, intellectuals, thinkers and industrialists met to discuss ideas and inventions. They used to meet in Soho House,Matthew Boulton's house, the Steam engine inventor,every month during the full moon, because the extra light made their their journey safer and easier.
The Luddites movement members used to meet at night as well, and one of the members took revenge of the leader of the Lunar society.when the leader left the meeting heading to the manufactury he was killed by the luddite hoping it will change something about the unemployability.