The Sacred Grains

The Sacred Grains

A personal world building project in which i tried to design different characters and creatures that could all thematically and aesthetically fit together.

In the world of The Sacred Grains, rice is used as a source of magic and divination, and an evil witch seeks to destroy all the crops. 

Different thumbnails for Mira, the main character. I ended up choosing "D" because I liked the agile and primal look she had.

Thumbnails for the Witch, the main antagonist. I tried different degrees of "monstrosity", ending up choosing "B" because I wanted her to still feel feminine and elegant, while still feeling ominous. In the final version, i changed her hat to a different one, because i wanted her to feel taller and imposing.

While "B" is the closest to how I had imagined the constructs in the beginning, I allowed myself to explore diffent shapes and to push the proportions, ending up choosing "D" and repurposing "E" for another creature on its own

The mount and the minions were designed at a later stage. This time, I skipped the thumbnailing phase in order to speed up the workflow

The environment underwent the longest design process in the project. I first tried sketching it in 3d with blender, going as far as to complete the lineart and start the coloring phase for one version.

At some point during the process, I realized that using blender resulted in a less expressive piece, so I decided to go back to 2d thumbnailing, checking out perspective with a perspective grid at a later stage, allowing me to experiment more with organic shapes and composition.