Edgar

Explorer of the Wild

Edgar

Edgar is a character design concept for the main character of a fictitious 3rd person 3D action adventure. He is the playable character, in a game, where the player discovers and travels through the cold landscape of Alaska. The goal is to reach the small village in the north in time. Edgars father is very ill and his son is the only salesman with medicine in the northern area.

The player experience a great voyage through dark forests and icy vastness with their dogsled and they have to brave cold and the wilderness of Alaska.
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Workflow

The project was part of my academic studies at HTW Berlin. We started to make a maquette in the first semester. It contained the whole character concept, but it changed a bit over time.

After the concept and design was finished I could start to work. I used an aluminium skeleton to stabilise the figure. The modelling was made with super scalpey. The maquette has a height of 35cm/13.8″ and it took me about 1 1/2 months to create.
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Illustration

In the second semester we had to turn our maquette into a character illustration. I cleaned the proportions and minor flaws first. Then I made a value illustration to see how the surfaces work. Based on this I started to apply color to the character. I needed a few attemps, but in the end I decided to go with a very warm color palette. I added textures and patterns to improve the plasticity and set a high value on the silhouettes, but I didn’t wanted to abandon all original textures. I think these were highly unique and a waste to not work with them. You can see them on the shirt and small details like the belt. After all of this preparatory work was done I painted over the picture. Some areas like the face got a whole makeover, whereas other parts didn’t needed so much attention.

In the end I created a light background to support the character. A light blue with an icy ground seemed like the best possibility to show the general environment of the character but also retain a welcome and comfortable mood.

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