Beware of Bots

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BEWARE OF BOTS

CHARACTER & STORY DESIGNS

‘Beware of Bots’ is an illustration project I began woking on to develop my character and environment design process. I started the project by writing a short outline for a story about a boy who loves robots. The story centers around the boy discovering an old and rusty robot who has escaped from his inventor and become lost in the woods. The purpose of the story was to link a series of interesting characters, props and environments that I could develop visual designs for.

Once I had decided on the various elements that I would be designing for the project, I planned a series of research trips to inspire my work. These included a day at a local aquarium to observe underwater animals, a walk through a track of woodland park to study overgrown nature and a trip to Wales to gather inspiration for buildings and the coast-line environment. I also organized photo shoots with models to inspire the personalities and aesthetics of each character.

After completing most of my research, I spent several months sketching ideas for the appearance of the key characters. Initially I drew caricatures of the models and the environment, and then began pushing them further to add more appeal.

I sketched most of my designs in Adobe Ideas for iPad, which gave me the freedom to create numerous iterations of each idea until I found what I was looking for.

I selected some of the more successful designs and exported them to develop further on my Mac using Adobe Photoshop. These included final character designs, expression studies, environment plans, and conceptual paintings depicting key scenes from the story.