"Sanna" #4 - Artistic style

(Click here to go to the first blogpost about this project)

Style is quite a tricky one. I will be aiming for children who are 6-10 years old, and it should fit the culture in the region to match the narrative. I will also need to keep in mind that parts of the image will be animated - so it should not be exessively detailed.

A style I enjoy myself is used in the movie "The Secret of Kells" - although I can allow myself a little more details since this is a fully animated film and I am just making a (partially animated) book.

"The Secret of Kells"-style is inspired by celtic patterns and traditional art - which is often quite similar to old Norwegian art.

I'm also quite inspired by the style in the Disney movie "Hercules", which also uses a lot of simplistic shapes. It also uses a lot of typically greek borders and shapes, which is a good way to show the typical art culture in greece - I could do this only with norwegian woodcarving-patterns.

Screengrab from "Hercules" - which uses a horde of greek references, but in a fun children-friendly way.

boat-carving, photo from the viking ship museum in Oslo. Patterns like this could be used subtly to create a traditional and interesting style.

With these things in mind, I go ahead and sketch a character. This is just a hypothetic character, which wil most likely not be used in the book. 

After some doodling I've ended up with a character called "Sanna", one version that is more realistic, and one which is more cartoony.

The main inspiration for this is: The sea-eagle on the "eagle-staff" - sometimes people can find crooked, white staffs washed ashore.
The clothes are inspired by the traditional clothing "nordlands-bunad". The shoulderplates and belt is more viking-inspired, and women are well known to have belts with tools on them. Her hair and horns are inspired by wild norwegian sheep.
I have also made her quite elegant and intricate, perhaps godess-like, to associate the design with classic mythology.

Before I consulted with the client, I went online and asked for feedback online. I got quite a few helpful feedback, some you can see below (click to view bigger version):

This is two of the many comments I received - and they were all very helpful!

After reading through a lot of comments, I went ahead and made a finalized version.

Final style concept.

I kept the more cartoony style, the important features have been made clearer, and the colours helps bring out more detail and shape. The client really liked it, and this will be the style we'll be using! I'll have to be coming back to background design, but it should fit the style of the character.

next time - I have had word that the client has decided on which myth we shall be basing the story on! Based on this I will be doing a bit more character research.

<---part 3 "research"

part #5 - main character research --->