The Davenports and Van Herks

 As Jonathan and Josephine Davenport die relatively early on, I didn't give them personal costumes as they can easily be put in any of the costumes i drew whilst researching the eras. So instead here is their bio.

The Van Herks at least got some simple designs, but again as they were not major characters their designs were left and more attention was paid to their bio and the other characters.

Dr. Rivers, Winston and Sister Joy

There were three characters i didn't manage to focus on too much so sadly there is only their initial concept sketches. However, each character did receive a full biography.

Dr. Rivers was one of the first characters to be created but because our group simply saw him as the doctor and assumed his story was interesting enough, he was sidelined for the majority of the project. It was only when the end of our project was in sight that I realised how under-developed the character was. To counteract this I tried to give him a more interesting back story that showed that Rivers had a lot more history than a standard doctor.

Winston Cobblebottom

Regrettably, Winston Cobblebottom is the most under-developed character in the project. Due to disagreements on whether the character should even be in the game I was reluctant to work on him as i didn't find him very inspiring. Instead, Bas did some concept art for him and after that progress for Winston came to a halt. I did write him a biography and attempted to make the character somewhat interesting but i found it very hard to muster any interest in him. I would have preferred to have made Henry Van Herk a playable character for two reasons: because I felt Henry was a much more dynamic and interesting character and also because it would balance the age of the playable characters, since three of the four male characters are over the age of thirty. However, as time was running out Winston was allowed to stay, although if the project were to have continued, I would have liked to have scrapped the character entirely.

Sister Joy

Sister Joy was a very late entry to the character roster, being created after the simple idea of a nun with a gun which we all thought sounded cool, and since our whole project was conceived from a 'cool idea', she was added to the game and replaced the rather dull character of Adelaide Davenport, the grandmother of Odette and Edward. Adelaide is still a character, but a background character that is unseen and only referred to in the game as she is the Davenport grandmother that lives in a different city to the rest of her family. I would have loved to have thought up Sister Joy at an earlier stage as i think she had a lot of potential and could have been one of the most iconic characters. But sadly poor timing meant that Sister Joy was never to be as developed as the majority of the characters.

Odette Davenport

Odette was another character I designed very early on from the first of my sketches, and apart from some adjustments and added details she wasn't altered much because I was so happy with how she turned out.

This is page also features the one design of Queen Vicky and her zeppelin

Edward Davenport

The costume on the bottom far left was the final design

Edward Davenport was thought up fairly early on in the project but wasn't actually developed until the later stages as we didn't feel he needed much development and we were happy with our ideas about the character. I refined these ideas and added in his romance with Grace and his attitude toward his parents and upper class society in general into his biography.

Charlie Davenport

Charlie Davenport.

Charles 'Charlie' Davenport was known as 'The Uncle' for a while whilst Virginia, Odette and Grace were being created but when Virginia (who was at that point known as 'The Whore') seemed unconnected to the other survivors, I came up with the idea of marrying her into the family. To do this we needed a black sheep type character and the Uncle fit the bill perfectly. Together with my two teammates we threw around ideas of what Charlie would be like and we eventually decided on him owning a flying circus that travelled around America and eventually came back to England to visit.

Initial concepts of Charlie with Virginia

Wanting Charlie to be a bit eccentric I designed some bright and colourful waistcoats for him to wear, we eventually decided on Waistcoat #2.

Concepts of the costume and snake tattoo that was also decided on

Grace Mills

Grace Mills was another character that was created at the beginning of the project as we wanted some of the survivors to represent the staff and lower classes to cause some friction with the upper class Davenport family. I wanted Grace to be the perfect maid before the outbreak, but i also wanted her to be an integral member of the group afterwards and someone who would stand up to her former employers when it came to her own survival. Later on I also came up with the idea of Grace and Edward having feelings for each other, which could create a little forbidden love story amongst the horror of the outbreak. I included all this in the bio i wrote for her.

Virginia Sinclair

Virginia was one of the first characters we came up with and i'm happy to say that i was the one who conceived pretty much everything about her. Below are the initial sketches of her, along with a character turnaround and her bio.

 For Virginia's face that my team mate Bas was going to draw, I gave him a reference picture of who i felt looked like her. That person was actress Samantha Ferris.

Below is the Image he did, it is exactly how I pictured her and i'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Credit to Bas, who's blog is linked on my first and last posts 

I think Virginia is my favourite character. I'm really happy with her design and i think her back story is the most interesting.

Costume Research

Since i was allocated story and costume, I couldn't start designing without having some sort of plan as to what the Victorian and Edwardian eras were like in terms of clothing. To solve this I sketched out a lot of Victorian and Edwardian designs. I've drawn everything from butchers to ballerinas in an attempt to really encompass the era's different costumes. Although there is a lack of colour in my designs this is partly due to the Victorian and Edwardian era as colour doesn't seem to have been used much but also because a variety of colours can be used if we want to use them, but colouring each and every costume would be too time consuming and unnecessary as i was also swamped with story planning, biographies and my dissertation.

Enough excuses though, enjoy!

Flotsam City

Just like the names of our characters, the name of the city was highly debated with various suggestions being put forward but none sticking particularly well. I did the same as i did with the names and wrote down a few potential names for the city. This eventually led to the city being called Flotsam. We then started designing different features of the city, including transport, architecture and the city's shape itself, below are my ideas.

Next I wrote up the city's history that explained what the city was famous for and how it was designed.

This then led to the actual design. If we had had a fourth group member they would have probably been put in charge of the architecture and planning of the city, but since we didn't have that person I did what I could so that people could at least get a general idea of what we were going for.