Premise; Moth Creature Character Designs

Design for my Premise short film's currently un-named protagonist.

My films protagonist is a fantasy creature living in an abstract fantasy universe, so I had decided that I wanted to explore designs a bit detached from the human form. Since my film's focal character is good, and meant to invoke sympathy from the audience, I decided it would be helpful for him/her to have a cute element. However, due to the intended dark expressionist/Tim Burton tone and style of my short, I could not go too 'conventionally cute', such as a kitten or puppy, since it could easily seem out of place unless I was careful with the styling. There are also quite a lot of cat/dog/rabbit characters already out there, and I'd have to have a reason to pick a specific animal which feels relevant to my short/characters theme.

I had a think about other animals I could use as a base, and realised that a moth was a perfect candidate, since they are cute, but a little unconventionally so (sort of bug-like and alien), which could bring in the slightly twisted element more easily. Also, conveniently the main theme of my short is light and dark, and the dangers that lurk in the dark. Moths are attracted to light, and need it to navigate, so it fits pretty well with this theme.

I put together a mood-board of moths, creatures other artists had made based off of moths, and a couple of unconventionally cute characters that I felt gave off the same feel that I wanted to go for; stitch and ori from 'ori and the blind forest'.

 I started with design 01 by making quite a bug-like creature with some moth-like antennae and fur. I felt this was a good start, I liked the way the bug-legs made the creature hunched over. But it felt a little too on the buggy side, and not very relatable/sympathetic. A bit too creepy.

I moved on to try and make a more rounded, fluffy character based more closely off some of the moths in the mood-board, and bring in some more animal-like elements (animal feet). This was a step in the right direction, I liked the big hands and big fluffy mane; it definitely looks quite cute. However I decided design 02 might be a little too animalistic, which might conflict with the idea that this is supposed to be a sentient creature. It also felt a little too big; I wanted to change the proportions to push the 'big head, small body' cute factor further. I liked the wings, but they would imply that the creature could fly, and this wouldn't work with the story.

I drew design 03 with the intention of making a slightly more human-like character. I also added clothing to help establish this character as a person rather than an animal; a hooded cloak to add a sense of cold, and mystery, and a cape to mimic the wings on design 03. This felt like it was getting pretty close to what I wanted, but it felt a little under-developed and too wide.

For design 04, I tried to stay close to the idea of design 03, but refined it further by giving it more detail, and changing the proportions a bit again. I added the big hands, fluffy cuffs and animal feet from 02 back on, but tried to keep to a slightly more human form. This resulted in a character that I felt looked appropriately cute but also quite strange/alien. I might also consider adding a big over-sized backpack, which I think would be appropriate for the story (the character is a traveller lost between two cities.), and make the character look even smaller and cuter.

The brown colour-scheme I went with is not necessarily final, but for now I wanted to stick with a fairly muted look, since that's the style of a lot of the reference material I've been inspired by.