Character Design - Concept Art

After doing my character turnaround, facial expressions, action poses, and sketches, I felt like I knew my character well enough to move on to concept pieces. In her backstory it is revealed she is a Renaissance painting that comes to life, so I drew her Renaissance painting. It is titled 'The Conflict of Grace', since her character is someone who is always conflicted between doing good or evil. (and often she chooses evil) Like most Renaissance paintings, the portrait is very striking with the black background and dramatic lighting. I copied this style for this piece to be authentic. I also copied over other elements, such as a gold halo, self reflection, an angel, and dull colours. The main element I needed to replicate was the oil painted look, so I used a oil paint brush from Photoshop to recreate this digitally.

I then created some quick backgrounds for my character presentation, and found I really liked the outcome. I tried out a bright colour scheme, which looks very striking, however I did realise it doesn't work with my character's colours. I did like the simplicity of the background, and the Renaissance pattern I overlaid on top.

After doing this background, I did a quick concept piece using those colours to see if they worked with my character and the mood of the film. I chose the scene where she escapes her painting. The red and blue work ok, but I think it makes the scene too dramatic and it isn't the atmosphere I was going for. I struggled to use her colours with this background. I used the Renaissance pattern to improve it, but I don't think it made it look much better.

After seeing the problems with the colours of the background, I went back and changed the colours so they were closer to my character's design. I prefer this design, and I am planning on making some concept art with this design to see if it works as a whole.