Dark Magical Academia – Character concepting and development

I really enjoy making characters and including details in their designs that show off personality.

I had a go in desgining all our characters from the Dark Academia animation group I’m part of.

General Pinterest I created for everyone to add and use: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/feylock_/magical-horror-academia/

Designs for Fern:

Fern is our protagonist, she is messy and adventurous. We felt that because on of her traits was being up for adventure, she would get muddy and ruin her clothes more often. I had referenced a lot of school uniforms based from the UK and Japan, although I went for more Japanese type uniforms that have the old English style influences. I think the shapes complimented Fern much more, and added a lot of interesting layering and colour options too.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/feylock_/fern-inspirations/

I first tried to create some silhouettes of Fern that would express her personality as a fun loving, young student. I applied the silhouettes into the uniform creations. I really liked the green cape but it did make her seem much older than we wanted, so the group settled on the jumper/skirt look along with the colour, as a purple/blue seems to read as magical.

some art to get used to her –

Final Character sheet:

As a group we all made contributions and artwork when we could for each character. We decided to follow through with my design for Fern with some suggestions from group members.

Some of her maint features would be her clothing and hair. I wanted to portray an older teen who had a more playful personality. As a group we liked the idea of two buns, although we didn’t know the position and hair type. I felt a slicked back look with some poofy buns would make her seem older but childlike aswell. Her clothing represents her personality as well (being a little messy and playful), although to keep it simple we held back some ideas and tried to keep it clear she was a student as well.

Monster design:

I looked at a few references for this, mainly The Last of Us 1&2, Fantastic Fungi documentary and the Myconid race from Dungeons and Dragons.

Pintrest moodboard/inspo: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/feylock_/magical-horror-academia/

Headmaster Human/Monster:

We had a varied amount of ideas for the Headmaster and his Fungal look, but in the end we agreed it would make the most sense being an animation without voices or a lot of time to keep his face visable with accents of infection. It fit in also with the idea he is mentally strong willed to control the fungal infection and therefore doesn’t effect him physically as much.

Pintrest moodboard/references: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/feylock_/headmaster-humanmonster/

Headmistress:

I think we all had in mind the same type of character. Strong, bold and confident.

I was inspired by some figures like Gillian Anderson, Eva Green and various spellcasters from One Upon a Time the televison series – among other inspirations. Especially with Penny Dreadful and Once Upon a Time, the costumes are elegant and remind me of fantasy spell casters.

Headmistress moodboard/inspirations: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/feylock_/headmistress-inspiration-and-reference/