Today I got to work on creating the final frames for my project, working in Photoshop and using different layers to divide up the foreground, midground and background to allow me more access to the different layers meaning I can add more diverse movement when coming to the final edit. I planned it out so that I would create the lineart for each frame first, making sure it was all clean and layed out before I got to colouring it so that I could easily go back and forth from one frame to another to colour background, characters and different elements.
I had initially planned for the backgrounds to be in a simpler, lineless style, however I realised this would take far more time than it would with lineart in place as guidelines and would also help me blend the designs together easily. When coming to finally colouring the frames, I plan to colour the lineart a deeper, more saturated colour of the objects colour in order to lessen the harsh lines and blend the objects together in a cohesive way. I used this technique whilst designing the main three characters, giving them each a deep, saturated version of their signature colours.
During this time, I also had fun and played around with the ways the characters would interact with others and their surroundings. Whilst conceptualising the characters I knew that I wanted the main member of the group, Zest, to have a rather chaotic and 'act before you think' personality. From this idea sprung many others which made her whole character rather comedic giving her character elements such as;
Eats tree bark.
Licks people she likes.
Laughs uncontrollably.
This helped bring a more unique and dynamic feel to Zest as a character as often times in media, female characters aren't allowed to be weird or dumb without it being seen in a way that makes them seem like a stupid blonde, character. I took inspiration from the character 'Ruffnut' from the How To Train You Dragon series, a female character who is one of the comic relief characters within the series but isn't seen as cute, dopey or dumb from her stupidity. This is the essence I wanted to mirror in my own unique way with Zest.
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