Brie Dark - 'The Affliction of Cele'

Thank you for visiting my entry! My name is Brie Dark, I am studying Visual Effects and Entertainment Design at CDW Studios/Flinders University. This is my first Rookies entry, and I look forward to being involved in the future. I've submitted one character design project I have been working on, 'The Affliction of Cele'.  My primary focus when designing these characters was ensuring their appearance reflected their personality and backstory. With this in mind, I have also included snippets of relevant plot. Enjoy!

The Affliction of Cele

Inspired by the somewhat gruesome, yet whimsical, style of classic fairytales, 'The Affliction of Cele' follows the tale of a boy, a queen, and a monster. 

Our story begins with the formidable and prosperous kingdom of Cele experiencing a collection of disastrous events. The first, an attack on the royal family by a vile beast. Thankfully, the king, queen, and prince are unharmed and the beast is slain. Or so it seemed. The second, is another attack. The king and prince are slaughtered within the castle walls. The queen is found with her garments shredded and a sickly sheen to her skin. Every night where the moon is full, the beast strikes and claims another life. The queen employs the aid of beast hunters, but alas all are devoured by the creature. That is until the arrival of a particularly short beast hunter...

Pax

Orphaned at a young age, dear Pax needed a job. He found employment at multiple establishments, but he couldn't say he was very good at any of them and none seemed to last. That is... until he killed a troll. With a new career (and a gnarly scar), Pax travels the land in search of assignments and instead finds himself mocked by many. After all, how could a kid kill a beast?

After a shortage of beast hunters, Pax is finally given a handful of jobs that he completes with ease (to the surprise of many). And eventually, he receives a letter from a queen.

Pax doesn't have a lot of money and only ever relies on himself. With this in mind, I designed him with primarily simple, neutral colours that would have been cheaper to buy. His cloak, pants and shoes are also ill-fitting, so he has room to grow into them.  With nobody to depend on, Pax struggles to tie his shoelaces and never brushes his hair resulting in his disheveled appearance. His cloak also allows him ample room to stash a collection of weapons and stolen food.

Queen Asteria

Queen of the vibrant kingdom of Cele, Asteria is far from healthy. This is not information known to any besides herself. A recent widow, Asteria mourns her husband and son. Her grief is so intense that she is never seen outside her darkened cloth. Her skin is never uncovered, with the exception of her sickly pale face. Many believe it is to cover ghastly scars left by the beast. This information would be found to be partially true.

The threat to her kingdom is no longer merely the beast, now named 'the Nox' by many subjects, as Cele teeters on potential invasions from neighbouring kingdoms. With the king and the heir dead, Queen Asteria is now the lone ruler of Cele. A respected queen, she must not show any sign of mental or physical weakness.

In designing Asteria, I needed to convey her as a multi-faceted character. She must appear regal but also sickly. Kind and motherly but also capable of committing attrocities. I settled on green in her colour palette.  A colour that is seen easily in both positive and negative contexts. She uses the mourning of her husband as an excuse for her dark clothing. The dark colours hide any blood she may have accidentally accumulated on herself. She is tall and thin, giving an aura of authority but also hiding her frailty.

The Nox

A vile and elusive beast, the Nox evades capture from even the mightiest of beast hunters. It is almost as if it can predict their every move. As dark as the night it dwells in, the Nox possesses human like fingers that can open doors and climb trees, and is littered with scars from attempted killings. It haunts the nightmares of not only the citizens of Cele, but of people far and wide.

The Nox only appears under the light of a full moon, but even if you lock your doors and bar your windows, you are not safe. It must feast.

Taking inspiration from the Big Bad Wolf, the Nox resembles a canine. Other influences in this design are werewolves, Cerberus, Fenrir, and Anubis.

Transformation

The Queen of Cele has a secret. In the first attack on the royal family, the beast did die. But not before it infected the queen. The night of the first full moon after the initial attack, that was when she discovered the true extent of her bite wound. The price? her husband and son.

In her despair she tore her claws across her chest, resulting in gruesome scars. The scars on her back were caused by near misses by the beast hunters she employed and trapped. 

The clever, yet misfortunate, Queen Asteria decided on a desperate plan to save her kingdom. As Queen she must remain an image of strength to her subjects and enemies, and as the Nox she must feast on beast hunters in replacement of her subjects. The enemy kingdoms also fear the Nox, so why not scare them away with a symbol of horror? The strategy was working, until a beast hunter of similar age to the deceased prince arrived.

In order for the link between Queen Asteria and the Nox to be believable, the two needed to share characteristics. The clearest similarity is the identical scars the two characters share. Another, is a matching green eye colour and that the Nox owns a pair of humanoid hands. They also share a slimmer, graceful frame albeit one is human and one is beast.

Illustration

This piece is an attempt to put the characters harmoniously into an artwork together. The aesthetic I sought to produce was of something that would fit into a Grimm's Fairy Tales novel. It is also fitting as it has a similar appearance to 'Little Red Riding Hood', with a wolf, a child in a cloak, and the woods. The Nox is bathed in the light of the full moon, which is intended to be foreboding, while Pax strolls unaware.