Building the World of Awyr: Character Designs

For my Concept for Animation and Games class this quarter I created the world of Awyr, a beautiful land with rolling hills and lush green forests, populated by aviary-humanoids who lived in peace before a strange race of creatures called the Drwg began to appear-- bringing along violence with them. In this time of chaos and fear, our main character-- a shepherd-- discovers one of the Drwg hiding in her barn, but in doing so also discovers that not all is what it seems and that the real enemy lies within the royal city. She must embark on a journey away from the comfort of home with the Drwg and a conflicted Royal Guard to uncover what the Mad King has been up to in the shadows, and stop it before it destroys their way of life.
Time Travel was required to be in my story, so that influenced the design differences between my characters and ultimately created the unique challenge of keeping them distinct yet cohesive visually. I strove to achieve this through shapes and motifs, as well as colors and clothing material-- the latter of which I kept in mind to illustrate each character's story and status in the world of Awyr. I also researched the types of birds that would match my characters the best and kept in mind which props each character would carry and how they (as well as their clothing) would fit on their alternate anatomy. Once I have the time to return to this project I would love to polish each figures' wings and add more subtle patterns and details to their clothing in order to further their visual storytelling.