Grown Up

For the Rookie's, I'm going to be introducing my project 'Grown Up'. Grown Up is about a teenage girl who finds herself transformed into her childhood doll where she discovers a magical world made up of her bedroom and her childhood toys. It takes her on an adventure seeing her life from a different angle and helping her find the balance between being a child and being an adult.

For the main character Maddy, I developed two designs; the Human version of her and the Doll version.

In the early stages of the project I began by doing some sketches and pre-visual work. I wanted to explore different aesthetics and character vibes. My project was going to be set in the early 2000's so I wanted to explore using different subcultures of the time to really push that. I did a lot of research into Scene and Emo fashion. 

I used a variety of methods to explore her creation. I went into doing some painting as I wanted to get her face right. I was aiming for her to look like a 15 year old and have that greasy ruddy cheeked look. I was inspired by the concept art for the game 'Grounded' in my methods for this type of design work. 

The next stages were to iterate and design based on these. I explored different fashion options to really get the authentic 2000's feeling. I also had to explore different items and symbols to really push her alternative fashion. Though she could have had more extreme hair and fashion, I chose to go with something simple as I wanted her to feel like a 15-year-old who couldn't afford to be super alternative. 

This was my final character sheet for Maddy. I tried to show all of the little details to her design like the doodles on her converses and the bracelets she would wear. 

For Maddy, I also did a series of Key Art exploring the her story. I wanted to create visuals that could be found in the game and help show what she was like as a child versus now. I wanted the game to feel nostalgic and have the emotion behind it where you could connect to Maddy and who she was vs who she is now. 

As well as the human design, there is also the doll design to think about. For the doll design I did a lot of research into 2000's dolls like Bratz and Barbie. A big part of this project for me was creating the feminine nostalgia by referencing the toys women would have played with as projects with this sort of nostalgia are not seen as often. 

I started the proper concepting for the doll design by creating a base version of the doll to drawover. This was so I could visualise the joint placement and how she would move, something important within a games design pipeline. I then explored different ideas of doll customisation, thinking about the ways doll's get changed and damaged when a child plays with them. 

After the initial design stage, I created a base doll that would be 'changed'. This doll was supposed to be hyperfeminine- the epitome of what Maddy didn't want to be like. This doll was supposed to be closer to Barbie dolls in style whilst her changed design would be more alternative, like Bratz Dolls. I decided to use lots of things in the clothing with strong textures, like knit and plastic. This was so they would really stand out in paintings. 

For the doll form I also did a final character sheet before doing one for both of them. In Maddy's I included a visual of the crochet shawl. I actually went and crocheted this in real life to use as an instant reference. It  also allowed me to get the imperfections of the crochet to look correct. 

Similar to the Human Form, I also did some key art pieces of the doll form. The first one was supposed to represent the transformation discovery and that moment of something akin to dysphoria and that sense of wrongness. The second one was more of an advertising piece, more to sell the concept of the character. I'm looking to recreate this box art for my Graduation show! 

As well as the doll designs, I also worked on some environment work for the project. Though character design is my strength, I wanted to push myself and try and create something interesting for my project. I decided to create an environment of a hub world for the game where Maddy would go to levels from. This would exist in the floor of her bedroom with levels taking place across the rest of the house. 

A lot of my work for this utilised 3D as I found it helped me a lot in my design work so there's only so much I can share that's interesting here. I was more floaty with the design process for this, utilising drawovers and 3D to create the bulk of the world and then creating the designs on top. 

For the worlds I created callout sheets for the individual elements within the world, looking at some of them as explorable structures. Originally my environment was going to be based around a theme park type main courtyard but this didn't really fit within the project I was creating so I decided to change it. The carousel and castle remain from this time within the project. 

For my final environments I did a big look over the main environment as a whole and then a look into Maddy's bedroom. For her bedroom I wanted it to feel like an extension of her character and tried to show that through the small props in the world, like the beanie baby and the kerrang posters on the wall.