Upper Body Design

I have been playing around with the idea of Lemurs being a omen of death, as pointed out to my by my tutor Phill, and began researching into Madagascan folk law and legend. It is said that different tribes see the Lemur in different ways, one tribe deems the Lemur as an omen of death, as it occupies the grave of a lost loved one or family member, and seeing a Lemur in the wild is a sign that either you, or a loved one will die. The other legend is that the Lemur is a guardian of the forest and a guide to lost travelers, both of these legends have given me some new ideas on how to design my character and I have been creating designs in photoshop to see what I can create using these ideas.

I Began by just creating a normal silhouette and then filling it in with light to create the formed body.

I then went on to add the fur from the lemur to my body, this is the point of which all of my designs are now generating from since I am happy with the way it looks with the patchy fur on the body.

I think that this design would be very similar to what i would create if i was to just go with a concept of forest guardian, as the lemur would be very natural as that is what the forest is, nature. I don't think there would be much alterations made, the main thing would be to create a setting which connotes the Forest guardian concept.

I have now begun creating designs incorporating the 'omen of death' legend and here I think there will be many alterations to the characters size, tone, shape among many other things. Once again the setting for the final design would have to also connote this concept which may prove difficult since this is my first time creating an environment in photoshop.

This is just a very simple design incorporating a skull to the character, I wanted to upload this despite its simplicity just so that I could get some constructive feedback on my thoughts and ideas.

This was a design which i created during my Phtoshop lessons, I think is a nice design as there is a sense of movement and it also shows of the design very well. I am also using this image as a point to design from as I think it would work well as the forest guardian design.