Book Character: The Flu

So I based the book character I wanted to make off of one of the last books I read ‘The Flu’

I based it off of an Irish Policeman in full riot gear to combat the zombies in the book.

From the descriptive words I could gather, he had a filter tank to breath into, full padded riot gear and dark hair. Wasn’t much to go on but he also had a partner.

To start off with my research, I looked into what kind of uniforms the Irish riot police would have had. Following on, I looked a couple of breathing apparatus to get an idea of how I wanted to make it look like.

After the mood boards were made, I proceeded to create silhouettes of my character. I went for a range of bulky armour to fireman inspired gear.

In the end I the silhouette that had the most natural riot police look to it as the book was based in a real place in a modern time setting.

I continued to develop the overall look of my character; adding colour and small details such as the gun and the riot shields.

I made some simple thumb compositions for the finals I wanted to make.

For my first final I made a simple composition, slightly looking up at the character to make him look more heroic and prominent. It’s like you’re on the floor with the zombie. Another reason I chose this composition is because I wanted to have a full view of the character.

For my second I wanted to use some scenes out of the book. So in one of my final compositions I put them in a car where they were surrounded by zombies just before they made a break for a house.

For both finals I played around with pre-set brushes to see what kind of effects I could get from them.

I’m quite proud of how these finals turned out, however I feel that I could have perhaps pushed the detail slightly in the car. However I wanted to keep it dark as not to distract the viewer’s eyes from the main focus of the scene.