October 2012

I started playing Gearbox Software’s Borderlands 2 in October and I love its art style. It mixes cell shading with hand painted textures, trying to maintain a comic book style and really reminds me of John Romita Jr’s artwork. This briefly inspired to make an attempt at designing a character in that world.

After that I thought about looking at genres and fitting art styles to them but it was suggested that I take something like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and attempt to redesign the dwarves. I thought about it and had a go by making them dwarves on some sort of space mining rig, partially inspired by Visceral Games’ Dead Space.

With Grumpy, I went for a chunky body with jagged hair. I even made him look balding to imply that he may have pulled some of his hair out in frustration. With Doc, I wanted to try something more rounded and flowing. Sneezy was an attempt at making him look sickly, diseased or plagued. Happy was made to look very jolly, maybe even a little flamboyant or camp. Dopey was made to look, well, dopey...

I took a couple of these characters and played with colour. I decided on reds for Grumpy, to represent anger, and went for a more clinical look with Doc, to represent the possible ability as a physician that his name implies.

I then took Grumpy and played around with shading and lighting.