For week 3, we had to sketch out six thumbnails of environments of our world while also designing different aspects of our world, and then we did a more detailed drawing of our thumbnails. I chose the “Shroom Tower” I designed as I liked how the perspective and I found it challenging to try.
I prefer designing characters than backgrounds, so I began to conceptualize the character’s of our plant world. Our scientist character is a big part of the story and I tried to focus on them as much as the plant species.
While the plants have many human characteristics, I wanted them to have features of their species, like how bluebells are facing downwards, or how cosmos flowers look sort of ragged. I would hope for their personality to reflect their species as well, for roses to be romantic or star gazer lilies to be day dreamy. I was inspired by dryads and wood nymphs for the plant species’ designs, especially Eurydice from the Supergiant game “Hades,” as I liked how the nature aspect of her design, like she has acorns attached to her belt and how her hair is tree leaves.
I also looked at Fifi and the Flowertots, a TV show about flowers. I found their designs to be a bit simplistic, but I really liked the colours of each character as it help differentiate them from each other.
For the scientist, we were looking at them being a child pretending to be a scientist who one day found these plant people and gained an interest and so began to “study” them. Their intentions are purely innocent and they are just curious about this secret race they had never seen before. For the scientist, I was inspired by Mei from My Neighbor Totoro, as I liked that childhood innocence about her and her reaction when she found the tiny Totoros for the first time was adorable, I wanted to translate that into the scientist’s personality.
