Moodboards|Machinima

After the idea brainstorming, I've decided to create 3 moodboards. Key elements I was looking for was: unusual sea creature (for character moodboards), colours, texture, shape.

Character moodboards: since we are after an unusual alien design, animals like shrimp mantis, sea dragons, jelly fishes or sea slugs (e.g. glaucus atlanticus) seemed perfect. They have a very unusual shapes and bright colours.

One of the brief requirements is, that characters have to be humanoid and preferably without tail (or anything else that requires extra rig). This makes it an interesting design challenge.
As we are asked to come up with two characters I want to make each one of them as unique as possible. Strong silhouettes and opposite color schemes/textures will make them more recognizable.

Spaceship moodboard: when creating this board I was mostly looking for weirdly shaped shells (to make a sea-themed alien world more coherent) and rocks with interesting textures. I've also looked at snail shells for their colours and textures. Architecture  (and sculpture) was another big part in this part of research.

Shell house in Mexico City (architect- Javier Senosiain, owner- Saching Tendulkar) with it's unusual design will be probably one of my main inspirations for designing a spaceship.


As we haven't agreed yet on style (wherever our characters should look more cartoon-y or be really scary and creepy), I've looked at different artists and included two (opposite) examples I'm happy to work with.

Little Shadow Soldier Turn by John Singh.
- funky little characters, interesting shapes;
- cute and cartoon-y but also mischievous;
- directed for younger audience, kids and teens.

Diseased thumbs by fightPUNCH.
- interesting head shapes, some of them quite abstract;
- scary and disturbing, but also goofy;
- for more mature audience,  as kids could find them too scary.