Game arts rotation: 7 deadly sin character roughs

Moving forward in creating a character design based on the sin of pride I made a total of 6 rough ideas exploring possible characters using the previously made silhouettes. What I focused on were the types of silhouettes I had chosen and the type of personality and imagery which came off them as a result: what type of clothing would they have? would they look human? who is this character? These were the questions I wanted to answer.

When creating these designs I used the general look of the type of clothing in my mood board on royalty, this was because of the ideas I had looked at in my research around the imagery of ‘vanity’ and decorative designs being similar to that of royalty and the attitude of being too proud to the point off putting others down. With each silhouette I played off the idea of roles such as the 6th being a butler or the 2nd being a princess, I did this to emphasize more personality to the viewer as if I were to mainly focus on one styled each rough would look very similar. With this each design stands out with their own look and has their own style to express.

Whilst designing these roughs I felt there was not a lot of variety as all the designs feature “royalty” in some way but not so much the original idea of them being the sin of pride, to combat this I decided to delve into what other ways there can be to express ‘pride’. This led me to the discovery of flower symbolism and whilst I had known about this idea I found the flower named ‘amaryllis’ which in flower symbolism suggests determination and love, I felt this flower could add another layer to the design roughs so I incorporated this into the 5th design. What struck me about incorporating this flower or a plant sub-theme is that whilst it may not directly relate to the sin of pride I had thought that flowers are usually given as gifts or signs of gratitude and with this the idea would be turned around with the flower idea being used to suggest a bitterness to the character. How I would develop this is include a flower styled pattern on the character through clothing or the imagery, what I would emphasize is the idea that the character has flowers around them like they are giving themselves gifts of their ‘achievements’ rather then actually earning them.

Looking over the designs I felt a connection with the 5th design not only because of the sub-theme of flowers but also the posing and how that shows off their personality. I also like the potential the rough idea has with it not just relying on the imagery of royalty but them seeming to be more of a cold and bitter person due to the way they pose themselves looking down at the viewer from the side. Going forward using this base idea i’ll create a few refined ideas which further explore the themes I used whilst also expressing why they are the sin of pride.