This week we’ve started working on initial character designs with character designer, Daniel Fu, of “Daystorm Productions”. Daniel is the author of a webcomic series, “The Retriever” and has an excellent portfolio. Daniel was my first choice on this project, because I’ve worked with him before, because he has a lot of artistic range, and because his designs have a good sense of volume and 3D form, which will be essential for our designs which will be modeled in 3D.
A gallery of Daniel Fu’s earlier work, that I gathered prior to contacting him about designing our characters. – (C) Daniel Fu / All Rights Reserved.
Character Artist Daniel Fu
I first met Daniel Fu online about 11 years ago when I started an open-source game project based on “The Light Princess”. He did some
excellent character concept artwork for us. Sadly, the project didn’t get very far due to technical limitations, so not much of the art was
ever realized in a final form. Still, I kept the artists in mind, hoping to find a better opportunity. Since then, I’ve been in contact with
Daniel a few times on potential projects, and I’ve kept track of some of his projects, notably his web-comic, “The Retriever”. When I started working on “Lunatics”, I knew I’d want to commission character designs from an experienced artist. I immediately thought of working with somebody from “The Light Princess” project, and I thought of Daniel Fu in particular when I realized we’d be working in 3D — his designs have always had a good use of 3D form, so it seemed like he’d be able to handle design for 3D modeling.
In the end, though, it was Daniel’s online portfolio that sold me on asking him to do the character design for Lunatics. His designs span a wide range of styles and I knew we’d have a bit of a challenge finding the right mix of stylism versus realism for Lunatics.
Currently, we’ve begun an initial commission in which Daniel will create sketches for four of our characters. This will give us a basis to work out any details on the full commission and also give me something to show in finding potential 3D modelers to realize the designs in Blender (and also, of course, to figure out from those conversation what exactly should be specified in the drawing Daniel will do for the full commission).
I think we’re officially having fun now. 🙂
