Dragon Bait and Animate

After changing my idea (and with the possibility that it might change further), I looked at roughing out a character that I could use as my protagonist. I started off with an inspiration board using images I'd been collecting for the past few weeks. This included a little of the environment, but mostly of the character, focusing on the character's role and outfit. From here, I sketched up some designs just using pencil and paper to see what kind of route I wanted to go down. At this stage I wanted to just keep the body shape semi-realistic without pushing the forms too much but as I keep developing the character, I'd like to see what I can do with shapes and silhouettes. In hindsight, I don't like the protagonist carrying a gun of any description as I think this takes away from the idea of her being a helper and trying to find the 'cure'.  I tidied up the lines a little in Photoshop before adding some rough colour to help work out where I wanted ...

After discussing the initial post-apocalyptic idea with my course leader it became apparent just how obvious the cliches in my story would be. We talked about how I could either try and completely avoid the cliches or find a twist, a difference in them that would intrigue the audience. Already, the style I'm working with is going to be different from a lot of what has been done before but the story itself has to change. One of the big cliches I've fallen into is this idea of a self-sufficient character who has some kind of military experience or background. So to avoid this issue I would like to avoid this "soldier stereotype" by making my main character some kind of nurse or paramedic, or perhaps a fire fighter or medic in the armed forces. With this kind of character I can have a uniform that could be recognised by the audience, something familiar that grounds them in the universe. I was also watching the original Blade Runner with my family last night...