Thesis Film
Character Design:
VOID
void, the protagonist of my thesis film, a small creature you can't help but root for. I wanted void to look cute and non-threatening in the beginning, completely at the mercy of the antagonist light. their design is based off a cat and a leopard gecko. Once I decided I really wanted to play with VFX in my film, I made it so that Void constantly drips inky darkness ,which plays an important role in the story as it's how they eventually transform and take down Light. It was important to me that even in Void's big form, they still retained that chubby, huggable appearance.
Light the dragon, inspired by a phoenix and a peacock. their crown of fire is meant to clash with Void's goopy body. Light is a power hungry, self-absorbed jerk who wants to bathe the world in white light.
The antagonist of the story, Light. In contrast to many other stories, I thought it would be a fun twist to make Light the "bad guy". light has an almost angelic appearance, with a glowing white body and feathered wings. originally light was going to be completely covered in fire, but I scrapped that for the sake of time management. Lights whole goal within the story is to absorb all the color and make the world pure white, and they would have gotten away with it to if it wasn't for that meddling Void!
(check out the bottom of the page for a bonus Light illustration!)
World Building
the setting for Void is a ruined/abandoned city. what happened to all the inhabitants? who knows, but now there's rubble strewn on the streets and everything is eerily quiet. all one might notice is the occasional trail of inky darkness.
thanks to light absorbing all the color, the world is now a stagnant white. it was intentional on my part that the backgrounds remained simple and uninteresting, since my focus was on the character animation and VFX.
Bonus Illustration
Character Design:
Light
void eventually turns into a dragon, so the "ears" on their head are actually horns!
In the final design I decided to make void chubbier and with bigger eyes, I wanted them to be very cute.