Wednesday 27 January 2016

From Script to Screen: The Seer/s - Initial Ideas and Sketches

When I knew my character was a fortune teller, I instantly had a few ideas for their appearance should be, so I began sketching in my journal almost immediately.



In early ideas for my story, the fortune teller was mechanical, as though she'd walked out of a fortune telling machine you'd find in an old arcade. It was also to imply that she'd been alive for a very long time, built by someone to keep telling fortunes long after they were gone. In the first sketches, the lower part of her mouth would move up and down to allow her to speak. In the others, she has a rubber face that could be removed, and a body made up of see-through plates that could be removed to access her internal workings for repairs and maintenance.


After scrapping the idea of making her mechanical, and changing her name from fortune teller to Seer, I did these more recent sketches which have mostly the same design. I need to explore her design much more before deciding on a final one, but I would like to keep the white eyes and hair, which will add a mystical "not-quite-human" quality to the Seer/s.

1 comment:

  1. I'd like to see more stylisation from you, Eleanor - a push away from realism, and a push towards something more eccentric or quirky - for example, check out Gerald Scarfe's concept sketches for Disney's Hercules... wonderful!

    http://monsterbrains.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/gerald-scarfe-concept-paintings-for.html

    and Coraline of course!

    http://livlily.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/coraline-2009-character-design.html

    I think your story world is in need of something a bit more stylised!

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