Practice: Japanese Cat cosplay

  For this exercise i continued to experiment with styling and improving my skills. Similar to my last practice, i wanted to test more on my illustrating aesthetics and styles. Inspired by the Japanese culture and the future ingame update: Tokyo, i played around with the concept of anime cosplay. Cosplay is growing to be very popular, dressing up as a cartoon character. Therefore i tested drawing a more manga like aesthetic. I experimented with more complicated shapes and forms, and more frilly 'cute' details that may appeal more to the general female audience. This is also a request from many friends from the secret world that feel like there are not enough "pretty" dresses.

Ofcause, i also want to test on how to layout my final presentation, how i would compose the page for a display, to keep in mind what i would eventually work toward to when it comes to my end of the year presentation. Therefore i kept my background to simple, mutual color, but i did not want to have a complete white back ground as it made the figures seem disorientated, almost as if they are floating. It also make the illustration seem incomplete, despite the works for my project are actually for conceptual purposes, i would still want to have the aesthetics of each piece appear well rendered for presentation.

Research pod research: design inspiration from the film Pacific Rim

For my research pod i brought in a book Pacific Rim: Man, machine and monsters - that i purchased from the film  Pacific Rim, Directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Del Toro's works with around the characteristics of fantasy and monsters, such as the Hell boy series. Very influenced by a huge fan of comics books and monster movies. From Pacific Rim, I was very interested in the sci-fi elements of the futuristic fighting mechs, yet fairytale/fantasy like designs of the creatures from the film. It reminded me hugely of The Secret World. 
Such as the monsters shown in game:


What also interested me was that Del Toro mentioned the design and concepts for Pacific Rim were very much influenced by the classic film Gozilla and the popular japanese anime/manga culture of monsters and fighting robots. Which reminds me that Tokyo is the new area that The Secret world is currently developing.

I like the idea of bringing the mech- fantasy theme in tribute to the upcoming Tokyo update for my project. Some of the interesting images i researched for the popular Japanese robot theme were as follows:

 

Concept artist response: Olve Askim

Olve Askim's designs depicts the game perfectly, it shows the traditional vs the modern vs the future. As all three elements are included in the game. I like the characteristic of his clothing concepts, realistic yet stylized. Wearable yet, out of the ordinary. Which brings in the unrealistic fantasy nature of games. His designs also gave the game the sense of freedom on mismatching to create your own fashion style. And it fits the back story of the game rather well, which is that team is no longer separated by nations but by which faction you are chosen to be in. Therefore all elements of fashion come together to express the player's own identity. 

Many in game fashions/costumes were designed to be quirky and fun, (e.g. bunny slippers, bikini sets etc) Therefore i started by getting ideas together by practicing illustrating some outfits similar to that, for parody purposes.

I did this nurse outfit to start practicing my digital illustration skills as well as depicting an outfit on a model. 

I also want to experiment on drawing styles to find a particular painting style i feel comfortable with and hopefully unique as well. 

I think this is a very unrealistic stylization of a female figure, which is much influenced by the average male gaming demographics.  I quite like how it has turned out however i would like to further practice and improve on styling and my fundamental painting skills.