Nerida & Daughters of Uttu Concept Portfolio

Nerida was my primary project during my final year at university, surrounding the CGI Siren character that ultimately brings doom to the sailor protagonist. 

This is a snippet of the work I did for it.

We start out with the opening shot, and my favourite keyframe. It depicts a British coastline, moody and cold as the setting of the film. This is also the widest shot within the film and one I wanted to get right as Nerida herself is also informed by her environment. Bringing in the colours as well as sea life as a reference point.

This are some sketches that I had done earlier on in conceptualising Nerida. Although these are only a few, you can still see how we transitioned from Eel and Bobbit Worm influences to shark as we as a team realised our own technical limitations. As a result of that it meant I leaned more into sharks as it accommodated more to what my team and I could feasible produce. 

These are the developmental sketches, trying out variations of patterns. I mainly looked towards Ocean Sunfish (surprising found in the UK waters too!) for their interesting and varied markings - whilst also trying to create flowing lines to bring an ethereal but predatory twist to it. 

As I was limited to sharks for the actual shape of the character, given that we had to create and implicate her in a real life setting, I wanted to print interest in the subtleties as well as anatomical approach to the design.

These are some parts of my side project called Daughters of Uttu. 

The Daughters of Uttu are a pseudo-religious organisation of all woman nuns/educators who worship the goddess Uttu in order to shape their century spanning goals. They’re an organisation who use the art of Alchemy to present the front of academics. Manipulating the merchant class as a quiet power figure; but also poison specialists who use their skills to decide the fates of figureheads- veering the future in a calculating manner. They’re therefore an influential political force behind the scenes that serve back to the planet they’re situated and the creatures that reside there - particularly upholding the native venomous creatures as sacred being as they’re alike to their Arachnid-like goddess.

These are a few sketches to show some of the highest members of this society. They wear masks inspired from Larvae or Spiders, as well as mixing different cultures and Nunnery  dress to create an imposing authoritative  figure.

The Gatherers represent the lowest class in this society. They are in charge of gathering, looking after the work animals as well as their reptilian companions and delivering to the alchemist storage rooms.