This is a character development for a personal animation project, "Bakumo : A Tale of Dream Eaters", the first animation project that I made back in 2014. As time goes by and my skill has grown, I wanted to revisit my characters and turn them alive.
Concept Art for Mei
Mei's design changed a lot compared to my previous version of her. I was influenced by Pixar and Disney design style at that time, but now I'm more interested in Japanese animation style, such as Ghibli and Japanese illustrator, such as Eisaku Kubonouchi.
Early Character Sketches and Development
Character Hairstyles
Clothes Development
Reference Sheet
This is the reference that I used to make Mei's character design. I did a lot of drawings based on cute asian children (as Mei is an asian little girl) and a couple design work by Illumination Entertainment (Agnes), Hong Soon Sang, and Eisaku Kubonouchi which inspired me as a character designer.
My second character, the Baku (Dream Eater), on the other hand, didn't change much compared to my first version. I did tried a lot of different variations, but ultimately settled to a similar look from the first version.
Early Character Sketches and Development
The baku is a dream eater that camouflage as a doll, similar to the dream catcher concept. As asian children loves to dress up their dolls, I tried to give baku a girly look but it's just too much, so I decided to leave the baku naked.
