Now that I know what idea I am going for I did a lot more image research to be able to expand my design ideas and make sure I am looking at every possibility available. I started my image research by looking at generic fairy designs, this helped me get a starting point from where my ideas could expand.
After this research I had a understanding of what most people portray fairies as but as my creature was going to be leaning more towards a spirit or sprite so I needed to expand my research. I then started looking at different types of fairies/sprites for artistic influence.
Flower Fairies
Flower fairies were a set of illustrations produced by the artist Cicely Mary Barker, which were later turned into books. I used to absolutely love these books as a child and they were an obsession of mine for many years. It thought it would be a good idea for me to relook at these illustrations for a bit of influence and nostalgia. I like the concept of each fairy representing a different flower which is something it could incorporate into my design work.
The Spiderwick Chronicle's Sprites
The Spiderwick Chronicles are a set of children's books, created by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black that were later adapted into a film and video game. In the story one of the characters writes and draws in a field guide about all the wonderful mysterious creatures he sees and I remembered there were some beautiful illustrations of sprites in it so I did a little image research of them.
Similar to the concept of the flower fairies, different sprites represented different types of flowers but were mixed with foliage and plants too and this was to help them camouflage into there surrounding so they weren't seen by the humans. This made them look as if they were actually part of the plant and this is something I want to focus on when creating my character, I want to show as little human attributes as I can.
Guild wars - Sylvari
After looking at the sprites from The Spiderwick Chronicles I realised that some of the designs looked very similar to the Sylvari from the game Guild wars. Guild wars is a online role laying game that was developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSoft in 2005. Due to its popularity the series produced a second game in 2012.
There are different types of races available for you to play as in this game and the one which I am focusing on are called 'Sylvari'. The are creatures that looks like plants which help them to match their environment. They don't represent any flowers or plants in particular that we would recognise as they like in a fantasy world were the environments/plants/flowers are all different from the ones found on earth. This factor is something I will be adding into my designs as I want the character to be as eye catching as possible so having strange and new types of plants in he design will defiantly help this.
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