These characters were developed as part of the Illustration classes in college.
The main idea was to create a main character, an animal and a villain. To develop them I built some background for each one creating a Dream Land where it would all take place, and them developed these three characters.
They were painted with gouache over colored paper
Helena is this 17 years old girl who uses her dreams as an access to the Dream Land and escape her rough reality.
This is how she looks in the Dream Land, with pink long hair, yellow eyes and elf-ish ears. Her plain clothes were made to look similar to pijamas worn by her when she goes to sleep, and her main weapon is this broken sword.
I chose to give her a broken sword both as a metaphor for her to complete herself during her journey and also after thinking that probably a big steel sword could be too heavy for a teenager to carry around.
The gray wolf here is Helena's best friend in the Dream Land and also her guardian.
Responsible for taking care and guiding her through this confunsing and complex world he was designed to look brave, serious (in contrast to Helena's bright colors) and loyal.
Since in a world of dreams, imagination is the only limit, I mixed up many animals to get to a design that I truly liked. One of my main influences for it's creation was the film Princess Mononoke.
My villain, The Hollow King, is the king of Dream Land and was designed to be as creepy and weird as possible.
The main idea behind him was that he was unable to dream by himself, and out of this envy, his greatest pleasure was to steal other people's dreams, and therefore, their essence too.
That is why his head is hollow, and so is his body on the inside, he is only a shell. But a very powerful and terrifying one.
