One of my favourite parts of illustration is Concept Art and, as you may already know, I also love to write, so it's an essential tool while creating stories. I particularly love character design. I really enjoyed using the characters from Rooted Wingmaker as a concept art school practice. Rooted Wingmaker tells the story about the meeting and adventures of two different, small and conflicted beings of the forest: Aetherion, from the Winged, and Jurg, from the Diggers. Here are the designs of both characters.
Aetherion is a very particular winged from the Clan of the Great Cedar. He was born with wings that allow him to be bright and admired in several fields, but not a specialist in any, which is not at all common... and not easy, either, when what your wings can do dictate the order of a strict and belligerent society. This makes him a bit of an exigent workaholic, who constantly tries to demonstrate his worth. He has an uptight and hard attitude and is specially demanding on himself. In the end, facing the World with arrogance is just the way he ignores his own insecurities and feelings (as he never had time for them, anyway). But there are things he can no longer ignore and, the more he learns and knows, the less he understands the ways of the Clan.
Expression chart
Character turnaround
Final art
Jurg is, above all, curious. But, "above all" is not something too popular among the diggers. They expect that your make sure the ground keeps transmutating the materials that fall, die and grow on it, and that you watch out for tunnels that get blocked. And so Jurg does but, after that, instead of enjoying a simple and hedonist life like everyone else, he spends every possible moment looking up (¡on the surface!) and studying how creatures fly. He is considered a bit of a genius, as he's always had great ideas of machines that made life easier for others who wanted more time to enjoy so... he is expected to have a quirk or two, isn't he? Jurg is nice, thorough, noble and laughs easily. He is sincere and even too direct. And, he is, "above all", free.
Expression chart
Process
Final art
Young Aetherion and Jurg sketch
