Umbra Characters

These are a couple of character concepts I drew for a story I had to come up with for our Narrative unit at uni. Because the story's meant to be geared towards a pitch for a hypothetical end-of-year short animated film, I wanted to draw them in a style that would be simple to animate. My usual art style might be a tad complex.

I think these guys' designs could still use work, but I enjoyed working with a more cartoonish style. I started with silhouettes for them (which is how I got into the idea of using silhouettes to generate poses), which helped me break out of my usual style.

In the story, Umbra, people's shadows represent their inner thoughts and feelings. For example, a couple of people could meet up and have a polite conversation, but they don't actually like each other, so you can see their shadows fighting in the background. Our protagonist, left, is currently named Damien; he's a surly teenager who hates the world. His shadow (aptly nicknamed Shade) finds out it can eat other shadows and, in doing so, gain power. Not 100% on what happens to shadowless people, but they'll probably go zombie-ish or just flat. Certainly in visual style they will lose all three-dimensionality, and they may become very plain personality-wise as well. Of course that would mean it'd have to be obvious that they are three-dimensional individuals prior to their flattening, so I'm still thinking about it. It might be very interesting to combine 3D and 2D mediums... but I like 2D better.

Digressing: Lenora, right, is Damien's best friend and foil. She's more timid and rather kinder, and the story culminates in Shade going out of control and eating Lenora's shadow. It's only then that Damien realizes what he's doing is wrong, but possibly Lenora's shadow becomes the light that separates Shade (or something deep like that) and restores everyone's shadows to their rightful owners.

I'm in a bit of a bind over what to do with the shadows' designs. Shade is supposed to change as it eats more and more, morphing away from a human form into the form of a monster. It's symbolic, okay? He would morph as below:

Everyone else's shadows are just silhouettes of them, signifying that Shade's gluttony is the reason it's changing. So for Lenora's shadow to have wings is a bit illogical. I don't want her to be eating any shadows because that's supposed to be wrong. I'm not sure. Anyway, I have until the start of next year to iron it all out. I'm actually quite interested in getting this film made next year. I don't know, though - there are so many brilliant ideas this year and I think I've got some tough competition!

- Hex