Premise 2018 || 'A Boy and His Shadow' Finalised Designs

Through looking at what is currently in development, I have decided to go back to basics and redesign some elements according to the initial idea of a creepy/cute interaction. The boy now is much cuter in both depiction and behaviour, and through interaction with the ghost is capable of interesting chemistry that defines their relationship, a reference to the idea of 'an unlikely friendship'. It was described as the story of a young boy who has a friend on the internet, but as it progresses, it turns out that the friend is actually some kind of superintelligent AI that is able to manipulate computers.

As usual, I have created some spare images that were originally for a portion where the boy goes inside the computer and inhabits a virtual space. Here, his clothes change and he gains an unusual companion who follows him wherever he goes, providing a sparing but powerful protection when necessary to protect the child. Eventually this arc would have led to him finding his room again within the virtual space.

In terms of environments, the space is basic and completely assumes the contents of a childs aged 8 - 12 room. A few minor details to note would be the unusual pictures placed about, and an old CRT desktop computer in the corner. 

The Ghost

In terms of development, the original design was considered too visceral and scary for the style choices of my animation, so to act upon this I have made a couple of minor changes to the pallette to make it more 'oily'. The eyes too have had a slight change in structure, with a square pupil like a pixel. 

Further experimentation was made to the form of the monster in this sketch, where I hypothesise different forms behind the mass, and how it uses these forms to its advantage. Fear of the unknown generates the creepiness of this ghost, so in order to preserve that, there is never really any whole to what is seen.

In terms of orthographs, I decided the best way to attempt this would be to create several shapes of eyes and noses onto a large mass. These pictures demonstrate versions of this idea by the study of facial features.