Matheo Delalle-Putniković character concept designs

LEGEND OF FOLHARAL (2023 work)

With the conquest of the New World and new settlers coming to take their land, many tribes had to adapt in order to survive. Shamans in their quest to find ways to overcome dangerous times, started experimenting with their powers. At first, they were the indispensable mediators between the world of humans and the greater powers of the natural and supernatural environment and of the larger universe and would use their power only to aid at certain moments. With the new threat of the invaders, those individuals who have been mystically recruited as religious specialists and "technicians of the sacred" - the true shamans - have turned evil, driven by their hate.

Only a few have remained true to themselves, never succumbing to the influence to lust for power. Holding on to their old traditions, they kept the charge of keeping the balance, mending nature and keeping the invaders out of the sacred forests. In return, nature had given them knowledge of the sacred herbs and many of them transformed beyond their human form.

IDEATION AND SKETCHES

It was a bit difficult to find in-depth descriptions about South American myths and legends, aside from the Mayan, Aztec and Inca cultures. I wanted to use other sources of inspiration from other various tribes deep in the Amazon forest, such as Desána or Yanoama people, who have their myths. Unfortunately, many of their stories were forgotten during the colonization in the 15th century and are passed down orally. With this, I thought of a way to use it in order to create a story of its own and combine the legend of Folharal.

At first, I imagined him as a normal human being, with normal visible anatomy showing. After a few sketches and ideations, I realized it needed to be more mystical. To his body, instead of his normal muscles, I refined them to be more like vines or branches, which follow the muscle anatomy. The parts which have more visible bones, such as the rib cage and hips, it is more of a solid mass, like a tree bark.

It was a little difficult to decide on the mask design. The first sketches resembled more of what you would see during rituals or mass gatherings and needed to come up with something simple and smaller. This is where I added more of my personal style - mixed heads with various facial expressions combined into one object - and was happy with how it came out. It brought out a more mystical aspect of the character and asks the question: what is behind the mask?

For the costume design, I took inspiration from photos taken of the indigenous people and their shamans. Their clothing consists of a few smaller clothes wrapped or on top of each other. For the colors, in all of South America, they use brighter and warmer colors in every piece of clothing and accessory. And a shaman is nothing without his drum and few trinkets in which they use for rituals and ceremonies.

For the final illustration, I did a darker environment with a more diffuse lighting, in order to bring more contrast with the character and to show the details on Folharal and to set up the mood of the deep jungle. This was mostly inspired by the books of Castaneda, the way he described some of his encounters with supernatural beings.

A lot of work was done in ZBrush. Even though the sketch wasn't finished, I had an idea of how it would look like in my head. I learned from this that you really need on paper, because you can easily forget the smallest details which defines a character.

The most complicated part was the hair. I've never mastered the Xgen in Autodesk Maya and tried doing it in Blender. After many attempts, I finally got the desired result, although there were a few bugs which later appeared in the final render, such as the beard on his face. Some of the render came out a bit weird, this is mostly due to my limitations of my computer and different Blender versions. I wanted to  work on this model more and add a lot of details, but I was reaching the thesis deadline. Overall, I am happy with the end result and maybe in the future, I'll do more on this model and fix a lot of things when I get more experience.