Ryan Lang

Ryan Lang Portfolio

Amazing artist to follow and take notes from.

On his Tumblr account he shows the process of some of his work

Character design pointers

Pixar

"Think about the meaning of the word 'character'. You're supposed to breath life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they're like to meet and how they might move."-Neil McFarland

Ricky Nierva

Above: Ricky Nierva

Disney

Below: Sergio Pablos 

The most important point he makes is exactly what I've been telling my team mates every week (!): without clear knowledge of the personality/motivation/ etc of a character the design is not believable.

Below: Aaron Blaise

Colour palette inspiration for future reference

I really just like the textures/patterns in the images below:

Xiao Pan - Benjamin Zhang Bin (colour work for future inspiration)

His blog is amazing!

Storyboard research

Brother Bear 2

Example:

PIXAR

PIXAR Colour script

Creatures of the ether - sky world inspiration

Large part of the ether is made of wisp creatures that are one with their environment but can also detach themselves from it as individuals and take on the image of any other thing.

Below- image of a World of Warcraft wisp

For the design of other possible life forms existing around, I looked at the Portuguese man o'war

and the zebra fish embryo

UPDATE:
Inspiration for an underwater dragon-fish creature / wisp form



Adapted from:

Visual sound

Today Beata pointed out to me one of last week's ideas we had written on the board as she wanted to make it part of our world. It was about representing sound as something visual, which immediately made me think of synesthesia and began wondering how we could incorporate it in a way that doesn't take away from the beauty of the instrumental medium.

The first thing to come to my mind was light and how brighter light generates louder sounds (due to the energy output) than dimmer light and darkness. Of course, everything vibrates at different frequencies, thus sound still exists all the time everywhere and as all things, it is affected by its surroundings.

On this page Cymatics we can see a few experiments with different sounds interacting with water surfaces.

I also found this gorgeous sketch of Christine Kaltoft, representing the sounds populating the sky, then the noise of the streets outside, then of the room she's working in.

One other iconic noise producing thing in fantasy worlds is magic. The process of molecules being altered and energy being repurposed creates dramatic sound fluctuations, as opposed to a constant release of energy manifesting in a leaner constant flow. In our project's world that is important for our character design in relation to their environment.

For our reversed world in which underwater dwelling humanoids aspire to dive to land and explore it, the way we are exploring the depths of the ocean in reality, I can see the water element of it being more of a gaseous-plasmic sort of environment, something like ether. This allows life to develop and exist in the form of pure energy. 

In designing this substance I'm taking inspiration from the movie
Song of the sea , 

 

and the beautiful and simple visual effects of Mulan 's ancestors

and various opal stones

Edit:
Sketch for the world


The dome exists deep in the ether ocean which is surrounded by crystals.

The frequency generated by the crystals creates an interdimansional breach that allows anything above its altitude to exist in the state of a "sky world" with its own laws and different life forms.