Excelsior Further Gang Designs

I combined all of the four gangs I had previously drawn out and created two new gangs. 

I used some inspiration from the Grinch with the curly boots on the first designs, and the stripes are inspired from Tim Burton character designs. I also looked at Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr Seuss and they heavily influenced the first design sheet. I also looked at the minions from Despicable Me and used the goggles design for the second sheet. 

Excelsior Gang Colour Sheets

 

 (Finished Sheet to be uploaded)

 (Finished sheet to be uploaded)

(Finished sheet to be uploaded)

I repeated each image of the gang and coloured it in then played around with them to see how they would look in different colours. I wanted them to look different and not just like a human gang, so knew that crazy colours would be ideal for hair and skin etc. 

Excelsior Gang Initial Designs

I decided to draw up a few ideas for some possible gangs that could live in the undercity. I came up with a wide range of ideas so that I could come up with some very different gangs for my final two. 

I used inspiration from Dr Seuss characters with the wacky hair and body shapes. I also wanted to express the types of characters and personalities the members of the gangs had. I then focused more on each gang:

After some feedback I was told that I should do some colour tests on these gangs to see if I could make them look more crazy or exciting to look at. 

Excelsior Monk Designs

The main character of this brief is a monk called Joeb. I decided to make my version of Joeb an eastern monk. Below is some designs for him: 

After doing these character designs however I decided I didn't like any of them. I was struggling to find a style of drawing for my character that would match the environment. I also knew that everyone of them was pretty much the same. Since I was struggling I decided to just leave this character for a while and work on the cities and and gangs. 

Excelsior City Ideas

After doing my research I started sketching out some ideas for the overall city, both poor and rich sections. 

I took the idea from my initial designs with the hanging houses and incorporated it into one of the new designs. I really liked this idea so drew out some more sketches to see how I could make it look. 

(Top image to be replaced by finished drawing)

Excelsior Research

After some feedback on my initial ideas it was suggested that I go in a slightly different direction with my ideas. I wanted to make my target audience children so decided to do some research into similar films to get some inspiration. 

I decided to look into Dr Seuss films. I love the look of the environments and how everything is off balanced and the perspective is all over the place. That is the look I want to go for, but make it my own. 

I also decided to look into Tim Burton films and character designs and it was suggested that I look into background done by Maurice Noble. 

(Above Images by Tim Burton)

(Above Images by Maurice Noble)

Excelsior Initial Ideas

For my initial ideas for this brief I came up with two first sketches. 

 For the first idea I thought it could be in the middle of a deep forest, therefore the city would be built on trees and be made to look like part of the forest. The pillars could be strong thick trees, the platform made out of earth with roots and dirt hanging down. I thought the houses on the rich part of the city could be made out of good, rich woods and be built to look important, whereas the poor houses could be made out of rotten wood and look more like garden sheds that are falling apart. For the undercity I also thought it could be held up by roots and vines, so it would be a bit shakey and unsteady. 

For my second idea I came up with a "candy land" that was built up entirely from sweets and cakes. I thought the pillars could have been made from candy canes, the main platform from toffee, strawberry laces hanging down as foliage, candy floss for bushes and trees, a chocolate pond, jelly bean cobbled streets etc. For this idea I also thought that there could be houses hanging down from the platform with little bridges linking them together like a network, and this would be where the poor people lived.