[PROCESS] BIRTH - PART 1

Fly Wonderful

Okay! Here we go again with some more designs for you process junkies.

This time, we’re going into yesterday’s Birth story illustrated by the amazing Vanesa Del Rey.

So here we go….

The Healer

Some context here, she’s a mage, that’s been imprisoned in a cell by the Institute.

An Institute man needs her help to heal his wife and unborn child.

The Healer pretty much started from just doodling and beginning with a face. I believe the top left image was the first rendition and I would just add on to it and substract and figure out different silouettes and shapes. Sometimes I’ll try out triangles and see where that leads me. Eventually I added goggle like eyes which reminded me of those 17th Century Plague Doctors that were dressed up in bird-like Gas masks that would visit sick patients at their house. It was actually perfect for this story since the Healers main role will be to visit and heal an Institute Mans wife and unborn child. This lead to me ditching her nose completely and replacing it with a beak. And from there the inspiration moved to those freaky Bird Doc’s. But my version would be something that would be less frightening to a patient. So I went with a red color for the mask to signify blood and life, hospital colors. Still kinda freaky but just a little less gloom. And to add a just a hairline of sunshine, maybe a telatubby type head thingy above.

I remember as a child, our family doctor would visit us if we were sick and the one thing that stuck out was his Doctors bag. I always thought, that bag contains everything to keep people alive including that magical instrument that allows you to listen to your heart. That was magic to me. So I figured, the healer needed her own doctors bag that she would use on the mother but in this world that bag is literally a heart that would magically pump blood through the arteries and disperse healing mist. I pictured those frankincense type holders that priest would carry constantly dispersing atmosphere. The thought of hanging it on her neck was my version of a doctors stethoscope annnd it just looked cooler chain swinging.

Lastly dress/jacket looked a bit bare so I added Sasha’s wonderful Kreska letters to bring it home. Check the image for the english translation.

Domicile Exterior

My thought was, he’s created a place of serenity for his wife, away from any distractions. It’s a healing place up above the mountains.

The trees on top of the roof would be a place of nature, anything that would eliminate any sort of stress for a sick patient, it’s own garden of eden. The basic idea is this Institute man has tried everything and gone to these lengths to try to keep his wife alive.

Coincidentally, I was having a fun Bob Ross painting session with the kids which I ended up using for the background of this image. I remember him saying “There's nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.” Maybe that’s where the rooftop idea came from.

Domicile Interior

When I started working on the interior of the dome, I kept thinking it would be cool to have a winding staircase in the middle that lead to the roof top garden/forest. But then I thought, she’d be too sick to use the stairs and mainly be bed ridden, so I flipped it and just designed it as a creation of tubes that roots and plants could travel though and lead into these cool diffusers that would disperse medicinal mist.

Fly Wonderful

The job was to design a transport creature that can fly. I always had a fascination for giant beetles so it was just my excuse to draw one up. The idea of building the passenger seats into the body was a bit gruesome but I thought maybe it can shed a light on how the institute treats living things.

A little technical trick here. Colour wise a lot of times, I use the hue/saturation sliders in photoshop to show me a wide range of color combos. I pretty much just lay my initial colors and then slide that marquee back and forth until I find a cool color combo to stick with. It’s crazy how many combinations you get, hard part is choosing which one.

This was an exploration of clothing. So nearing the end of story we see a kid exploring the garden/forest. The first thing that came to mind when dressing him up was outdoorsy type gear. The hat was an exaggerated version of a bucket hat that would be stretched to cover the whole back to protect from the harsh rays of the sun since he’s way up at the mountain top. I always thought why are the buttons on bucket hats so tiny for circulation so why not just make them bigger for added air flow. In the end of it all, I just wanted to make a deformed version of of a safari hat, something that just looked cool.

Hope you all enjoyed. On to the next one.

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