Marina Ruiz- Character concept entry 2024

Hello there,

 I am Marina, a character concept artist from Málaga, Spain. And I am passionate about continuing my journey in the videogame industry. With the determination about improving everyday and love for games I am open for new challenges!
Today I want to share some pieces of my work, showcasing what I am capable to do!

First I would love to introduce my post with one of my personal projects: "Champions of Novalis"
A world divided by different armies with their champions.
Every year there is a Colisseum where the Champions fight for their regions.

This is Ábadon. A Vampire Fighter with blood abilities and a lost arm.

This is the final picture for Ábadon. I wanted to give him a massive blood arm that replaces his lost one. And a huge gun that he uses when the ability is not charged.
I will show you now the iterations I made to find the correct idea I was looking for!

I investigated different ideas for the character. From a militarized one to a rebel. Exploring different lore for him. Since I always work on the worldbuilding and write stories for the characters I design.

In the end I decided to go with the option 2!

These are some callouts I made for the character. Showing the important parts of him, that is not an ordinary vampire but a "demonic" one.

Since I wanted my project to be a 3D MOBA-like game I made orto-views for the modelers to see how the cloth works. And of course adding some important details as his back's scars.

In this pieces I wanted to do some exploration of the abilities that the character would have. From using his gun and teeth to his blood arm.

Even tho the game would be a MOBA-like I wanted to explore some expressions for Ábadon too. You never know when you can use some conversation sprites!

And the last but not least picture of this project are their HUD abilities exploration. Explaining what each ability would do and, of course, the icons.

I have many more Champions of Novalis on my personal portfolio but I wanted to share with you some different projects that embrace different color techniques and fields.
The next project is a creature design I made using photobashing as coloring method.

This is the final picture of the creature and some different views. I called them Kiüra.

For this project I explored many iterations following the idea of a prey in a Tundra environment. I went with the 8th idea but those marked with a circle are suitable designs as well.

The next project is a skin I made for Kayn from League of Legends.
I wanted to explore the Eclipse Skinline since I am a huge fan of that one.

These were the final 2D designs for my skin. I had to study and do a lot of research of the skinline and the character to keep the readability and silhouettes to make him recognizable!

These were some interesting explorations I made during the process. I worked with the shapes and different rythm in the designs. My principal objective was to make interesting transformations from the base eclipse idea.

These were the explorations for the scythes I made.

I worked with different shapes and ideas, both transformation weapons were made parting from the base to keep coherence.

These were the in-game views I made.
I added some perspective and shadows on the bottom part to highlight the character's focal point!

I also solved some problems I noticed in the 2D design to make the character functional for the game.

The last part of this project is a VFX exploration for the skinline. 
I wanted to do the lunar eclipse effects thinner and elegant, and the solar ones matching with Rhaast's personality!

And last but not least I am sharing another project I am working on: "Whispers from the desert"

In this project I am using a different color techique and I wanted to embrace a more desertic ambient.

Let me introduce you to Seszu, my first character for this project and a Warlock whose powers come from a dead pharaoh!

This is the final picture of the character and the process followed to finish him.

I wanted to explore how to use gradient maps so I worked on the values and then added the colors!

These were the early iterations I made for Seszu and the different cloth explorations too.

I decided to make a monster closer to the character so they looked like only one character. I really liked the idea of using complementary colors for each one.

And as a final picture of the character design I wanted to explore his personality through expressions.