#digi prac

Here I planned out potential light sources/shadow placement for my final piece plans. I developed 3 different ideas, the three portrait pieces showing personality, the three landscape pieces illustrating the scene, and a new idea that is focused on their eyes.

I grouped all of my ideas into sets of three. The first is the landscape ones, next is a new idea I came up with that features an extreme close up of all of their eyes. Next I grouped the three landscape close ups, imagining that they would illustrate part of the story where Crow and Anya are fighting, and I edited one of the Ahren pieces to make it look as if they were in the same scene watching their fight. The final landscape idea was to combine the side portrait  ideas together into one.

[Add non coloured ref sheet]

For Ahren’s final design, I narrowed it down between two outfits. As much as I like the look of the first, in the end I did not go with it as even with dark colours it felt too ‘flashy’ for his character. For his hair I combined parts of the initial designs that I liked, and went with a relatively neat and short hairstyle, but with some messy flicked up parts to reflect his background but showing that because it’s messy too it represents the fact he’s no longer in that environment.

I went with the very long high colour coat and gloves, because I felt that he’s want to cover himself in the simplest way possible, so the coat itself covering his neck rather than a scarf. I also went for the grey colour scheme because I felt it fit nicer with his skin and hair colours. His eyes are also a shade of grey.

When creating the mood board and developing the silhouettes for Ahren, I wanted to make sure his design embodied his shy and reserved nature. Tying in with his plain and non welcoming poses, I wanted his clothes to be mainly dull and monotone colours, leaning on the more darker tones, but his hair colour to be lighter and softer to tie in with the soft and gentle side of him.

I also wanted his clothes to give off a more refined and less casual vibe that Crow’s or Anya’s, to hint at his origins, as he was from a much more wealthy background. And seeing as he escaped with only what he was wearing, it wouldn’t make sense for him to wear anything different, as where he is now it is very hard to procure new clothes.

Visual pointers I wanted: light hair colour, very tall and stocky frame, clothes that cover most of their skin and body frame

Name: Ahren

Personality: Soft-spoken, sensitive, altruistic, dislikes fighting and attention, weak hearted, unconfident, shy, gentle, empathetic

Back story: Ahren was born with the worms, but into a community of those who shunned them. In order to avoid being castrated his family had gone through multiple experiments in order to have them fully removed. They thought they had worked, but when Ahren was born with them, it was obvious that they had not. His parents went back into constant experiments of their own choice.

But unfortunately for Ahren, before he could even form words, he too was thrust into these tests. Which of course were all usually not properly tested before hand and where all experimental and dangerous. Eventually the scientists working on a way to eradicate the worms eventually found out that once a human hits a certain age, usually around mid teens, the worm becomes so integrated in their systems that it becomes impossible to remove them while still keeping the subject alive.

His parents and others over the age of 16 were promptly disposed of, and Ahren, along with a small selection of other young children were then ‘adopted’ by the research facility to become permanent guinea pigs. Eventually after forgoing many horrible surgeries, he was ‘cured’.

Ongoing story: Ahren eventually managed to gain the trust of the robotics organisation he was working for and they ended up helping him escape the town he lived in. After running away, he never really had the courage to live in other civilisations, and through a set of events ended up meeting Crow just as he was starting to create his gang. Being a naive and heavily influenced person, he ended up simply sticking to Crow and became a part of his group.

Likes/Dislikes:

+ Calm atmospheres + Crow  + The feeling of having a loving family (within the gang)

- Himself - Hospitals - Scientists

Strengths/Weaknesses:

+ Very physically strong + Immune to most natural ailments + Very loyal