2023 Concept Art entry

Hello to everyone! Here below I'll show The projects I did this year at IDEA Academy.

The first project I'm goin to show was related to the creation of a character that fitted the archetype of "the Hermit". The first question that comes in mind is "Who is anHermit?"

The image long associated with a hermit is of a personliving in isolation in a mountain, desert, forest or cave at one with nature, often on the outskirts of a settlement. Whilst this does apply to the hermit archetype, the archetype itself is broader than this.

The types of hermits I came up with are: the Wildman, the Shut-in, the Scholar, the Prisoner, the loner and the Monk (that I end up choosing). They are all different in a way but at the same time they share this sense of loneliness...

Here below I explain a bit how my process works. I almost always start with very quick and small doodles that I need in order to get the first glimpses of what a caracter can feel and become. In this case they are very different from one another because I was trying to get a feel of the many different types of hermits to then pick the one that inspired me the most. Usually as you can see I end up quite distant from this first dooles during the process.

1) doodle 2) trying quick variation 3) development 4) partially established character

I feel like expression are a great way to empathize with the character, and they are a great way also to take care of smaller details.

Here below a series of props related to the character, but mostly to the environment she lives in.

The last exercise for this assignment was the creation of the environment in wich the hermit lives.

Another project I worked on was a redisign of one of my favourites tv shows from when I was a kid, that's why this project was called "Childhood Nostalgia". For my project I chose a tv show that came out where I lived in 2010 called "Deltora Quest".

I picked my two favourite characters from the show Leaf and Jasmine. Leaf had already a strong character design that fitted his archetype so the process was pretty straight forward, on the other hand I belive Jasmine's character design didn't reflect well her archetype and her story, so I did a very srong redesign.

When it comes to props that are relatively simple I prefear to approach them with silhouettes rather then sketching. I start from siple but srong shapes and the add detail on top.

As for the previous project we had to design an environment in wich one of our character lived. They asked us to make a cutaway. In my case, becuse the environment was pretty small on the inside and intresting on the outside I tried to do a hybrid between a cutaway and an exterior view. At this point of the year we learned how to use blender so I had the chance to help myself with a simple 3d model.

One of the last prtojects I worked on consisted in creating a character and an environment realed to it. This time even if is not my usual process for characters I decided to use silhouettes to challenge myself.

The last project I worked on had a similar task but this time instead of the environment we had to create a related prop.

Thanks to everyone that made it this far! This year has been an incredible experience and I'm really hyped for what has to come!